Hammer of Rome

by Douglas Jackson

  To hold.

  He would let the Romans come to him. The role of his mounted warriors and the petty chiefs in their fragile chariots was to cause chaos and confusion when the enemy attacked.

  He had an image of the battle in his mind. The compact squares changing into more vulnerable line as they advanced, as Gwlym had assured him they would. They would hold their cohesion until they reached the marsh, then the lines would falter depending on the ground conditions. There would be gaps and angles the cavalry and the chariots could exploit when the infantry emerged. Those gaps and angles would be exaggerated when they began to climb the rocky slope towards the great mass of Cathal’s warriors waiting above. Only when the Roman line was ragged enough would he throw his champions at the enemy shields, where the sheer physical weight and overwhelming numbers would smash them backwards.

  Only one thing puzzled him. The long years of fighting these hardy, disciplined soldiers had given him not only an understanding of the qualities that bound them and made them so difficult to fight, but the differences that divided them. There were two separate types of Roman infantry and, in general, they could be differentiated by their armour and the shape of their shields. The men forming up below carried curved shields and wore chain armour, which meant they were what Gwlym called, disparagingly, mercenaries. Men from different tribal cultures who fought for money rather than loyalty, though that made them no easier to kill. He’d learned from the few deserters who had joined him that some were even native Britons. Agricola had recruited Brigantes and warriors from the southern tribes who had become bored with the dullness of domestic life under Roman rule, where no man could carry a sword without permission. But where were the legions?

  Cathal knew for certain that three legions had marched in his wake, the Twentieth, the Ninth and the Second. All three had been depleted by one means or another, but they still represented a more powerful military threat than the auxiliary units presently arrayed against him. He’d sent out mounted scouts to discover their whereabouts, but the enemy cavalry was too numerous and they’d returned empty-handed.

  ‘What is happening now?’ Gwlym demanded. The blind druid wore a fresh white robe and his matted white hair and beard had been washed and combed after a fashion.

  ‘Still no sign of the legions.’

  ‘Then you must prepare for whatever trick they are about to play against you.’

  ‘Do you still think it was right to fight here?’

  ‘You had no choice.’ Cathal felt a chill run through him at the resignation in Gwlym’s voice. The last few weeks had been like watching a fire gradually fade and die for want of fuel. ‘Your alliance would have fragmented, your army faded into oblivion and your name been forgotten in a week. Remember. Defeat can still be another kind of victory.’

  ‘Colm and my sword brothers have orders to carry away my body—’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Riders. Coming from the Roman lines.’

  The small group of mounted men had passed through the front ranks of Roman soldiers and were making their way at a trot towards the bog in the bottom of the dip.

  ‘Kill them before they come any closer,’ the druid advised, but for once his voice contained no real malice.

  As Cathal watched, a more numerous group of his own cavalry rode to intercept the approaching riders. ‘Tell them to put up their spears,’ he ordered one of his bodyguard. He noticed a flash of green and realized that whoever it was wanted to talk, not fight. Eight of them if he counted correctly. ‘The Romans carry the branch of truce,’ he told Gwlym.

  ‘All the more reason to kill them.’

  The riders crossed the bog and Cathal noted that they included one senior officer and another figure he recognized. ‘And it appears that our friend the midget is included in their number.’

  ‘More still, then. But you have ever been overly loquacious, Cathal of the Selgovae. Let us hope it will not be the death of you.’

  ‘We will hear what they have to say.’ Cathal waved at the warrior in charge of the cavalry to escort the enemy riders forward.

  ‘Keep a good hold on that branch, Hilario.’ Valerius curbed his horse as they waited on the Roman side of the marsh. Most of it was just heavy ground, but there were broad patches of proper bog where the mud glistened black and pools of rainbow-hued stagnant water promised a proper soaking for the unwary. He’d seldom felt so isolated as he did here in the middle of two great armies. Vulnerable, too. Calgacus’s Celtic warriors filled the heights above in their thousands. The bearded or moustached faces looked much more threatening from here, glaring their hatred for the uniform he wore and cradling sword or spear with a seasoned warrior’s ease. These were the best of them, he realized, Calgacus’s bravest and most wily, whittled down to a hardened iron core by years of campaigning and unity. One word from their leader would launch fifty of them to slaughter the impudent little band of Romans unwise enough to get too close.

  ‘If you think a few leaves are going to save us, you’re more foolish than I thought, lord,’ Hilario muttered, proving that Valerius wasn’t the only member of the party who felt exposed. They’d left their swords behind, not that they’d have done much good anyway. Rufus, who sat to Valerius’s left with his lips pursed, had accepted the order to accompany them with his usual equanimity. Valerius supposed that between the two of them they could have said what needed to be said, but the members of his escort had insisted that a minimum of six bodyguards – even unarmed ones – was the requirement of his rank. He’d chosen four by ballot, but Hilario would have accompanied him even if he’d ordered him not to and Felix had invoked the privilege of rank.

  A group of Celtic riders approached the other side of the bog and Valerius was pleased to see that their spears were at rest. One of them called out.

  ‘He says we can cross,’ Rufus said quietly. ‘But he must enquire whether his king wishes to speak to us.’

  ‘A warmer welcome than I expected.’ Felix eyed the field of glistening spear points above.

  ‘Still plenty of time for things to heat up,’ the little man said. ‘I hope you’ll be keeping your words sweet, lord,’ he said to Valerius. ‘I wouldn’t want to be among these wolves when they’re angry.’

  They waited for what seemed an eternity before a well-built young man wearing a gold neck torc appeared and gestured for them to follow him.

  Valerius urged his horse up the boulder-strewn slope with Rufus at his side and the others in pairs following behind. They covered a good sixty or seventy paces before they reached the great mass of warriors and Valerius pictured a cohort of the attacking auxiliaries marching up here in his stead, every step under a hail of spears and slingshot pellets and hampered by rolling boulders. He kept his gaze to the front, ignoring the curled lips and hate-filled eyes. At the very last moment the great horde parted in front of their guide. In their midst the only assault was on the nostrils. It wasn’t just the usual army stink of sweat-stained wool and leather, dried piss and the misplaced ejected shit of sick men who’d occupied the same ground for twenty-four hours and more. This was a much deeper scent of men who’d retained the odours of everything they’d experienced over the last five years. Years of constant movement and hard stony beds, of sleeping in rain and snow beneath the stars, of bad food and the threat of illness, churning guts and an arse that felt on fire. But there was more. An aura seemed to hang over them like a cloud. It contained a mix of savage hatred and an almost sexual excitement. The fear of death and mutilation, but also fear of failure, and an intense, visceral fury at the enemy who had forced this life upon them. They were lean and feral, an enormous wolf pack in human form. What few clothes they wore were ragged, but their spear points were polished to a killing sharpness. It came to him in that moment that he had been wrong. These warriors would never surrender to Roman rule. Yet he must try.

  Valerius looked up and was surprised at the warmth he felt for the man who waited for them upon a rocky knoll, a head and a half taller
than any around him. Beneath the mail vest he wore, Calgacus too was leaner than he remembered, the price of his years of defiance written plain across his swarthy features. A nose honed to an axe edge by hunger, cheeks hollow behind the beard, and narrow eyes sunk deep into his skull. Older, too. Deep lines that might have been cut by a knife point scored his broad forehead below the rim of his richly decorated Roman helm.

  Still fearsome enough, though, with another great sword strapped to his back and a massive smith’s hammer hanging in a sling from a leather belt on his waist. He stood, surrounded by his sword brother bodyguards, dwarfing the white-clad figure beside him. Valerius shivered as he finally set eyes on the druid who had kidnapped his wife and child and would have burned them if he hadn’t been thwarted. Oddly, he sensed Gwlym’s mind was elsewhere. The weeping red pits of the priest’s eye sockets seemed to be looking beyond the battlefield, where the Roman forces continued to gather, to a place only he could see. Cathal’s eyes widened a little when he recognized the identity of the Roman emissary, but it was to Rufus he spoke when the delegation reined in before the knoll.

  ‘I am glad to see you alive, Arafa,’ he said in his sing-song Latin.

  ‘And you, lord king,’ the scout replied as he and Valerius dismounted.

  ‘It is always good to meet old friends, but I fear you have picked a poor day for it.’

  ‘What better day could there be, lord king,’ Valerius asked, ‘if our meeting avoids the spilling of more blood?’

  ‘You are not wearing your fine sword.’ Calgacus might not have heard him. ‘It is not right for a warrior to be unarmed. It demeans his status. You should all have worn your swords. It would not have made you any less welcome. Of course,’ he turned to Valerius with a half smile, ‘you will still have your little knife. But now, I think, you must go.’

  ‘Would you not hear what I have to say, Calgacus?’

  ‘Calgacus?’ The Celtic giant shook his head. ‘That name again. Once it made me smile, but I fear we must dispense with it.’ His voice grew in power. ‘I am Cathal, king of the Selgovae, and war leader of the Caledonian federation of free tribes, and I am ready to do battle.’

  The men around him didn’t understand the words, but they heard the defiance in his tone and a great roar went up from those within hearing distance.

  ‘Perhaps there need be no battle,’ Valerius persisted. ‘Your warriors have fought and marched for five long years, and to what end? They are dying on their feet from camp sickness. You can barely feed them. Their wives go hungry as they wait in their huts for men who may never come home, and their children cry in the night for their fathers.’ He ignored Cathal’s dangerous glare. ‘The only reason you would fight today is that you are too weak to run any further. You cannot win. Yet apart from a few chosen hostages the governor has decreed that every man here can walk away from this hill with his sword or his spear in his hand and return to his family. If you are willing to surrender yourself there will be no more killing. Ask yourself, King Cathal, why so many must die for the sake of one man’s vanity.’

  The men of Valerius’s escort tensed for the expected violent reaction, but Cathal only uttered a bark of bitter laughter and it was Gwlym who replied.

  ‘Forty years since you Romans first polluted the soil of this island and still you understand so little of its people. Everything must be seen through Roman eyes, even if that leaves you blind to what is happening in front of your nose.’

  ‘The priest is right,’ Cathal growled. ‘You see sick and tired men who are barely capable of holding a sword. You talk of one man’s vanity. But I see fifteen thousand warriors ready and willing to lay down their lives for a cause. And it is not vanity that drives me to lead these men into battle, but duty. There are no slaves here, Roman, and there will be no slaves, even if you place us all in chains. In our minds we are free and that is why we will always be free whatever happens to us. Look at you. You already have everything you need. Why would any man want more? Olwyn talks of great palaces of stone and homes created only for the gods that have pillars like forest oaks. Yet still you would drive us from our wooden huts and our poor fields, trample our crops underfoot and take away our children to bend them to your will. You call us barbarians and offer us something called civilization, but all you truly bring us is robbery, slaughter and plunder. You see our courage and call it dissent and rebellion. You see our willing sacrifice and call it stupidity. If I do not fight today your roads will bind us like a prisoner’s ropes, your taxes will impoverish us, and your demands for tribute will starve us. If you were in my place, Gaius Valerius Verrens, you would not shrink from facing the enemy. Why, if circumstances were only a little different you might be standing at my side and I would welcome your sword. Open your eyes. You are no tyrant. Can you not see what I see?’

  Valerius stared at him, struggling to find words that would equal the other man’s eloquence, passion and honesty. What could he say in reply to a statement in which every single word hit home like a ballista bolt with the authentic ring of truth. Cathal was right. He had been blind. If he thought of his enemies at all it was as a mindless mob. A threat that must be defeated, disarmed or destroyed. It had never occurred to him that they might be fighting for a higher cause. That the sacrifices they endured were not the result of an all-consuming hatred for Rome or a warrior’s need to prove himself, but to protect their freedom and that of their families. Olwyn had tried to tell him as much, but, of course, he hadn’t listened. He saw one of Cathal’s bodyguard staring at him with a look of shrewd expectation. He’d thought of Cathal’s sword brothers as dumb animals who followed their brutish king because they had no other choice, rather than individual human beings. It had never occurred to him that the warriors the Selgovae led might be intelligent men with minds and talents of their own. He wondered if that was how he treated everyone who was not of his race or class. He remembered his contempt for Petronius, the quaestor of Colonia, for the way he treated Lucullus, the father of Maeve, the Trinovante girl who had loved and betrayed him. Perhaps he had been too long a soldier. In the end, for all his good intentions, an officer wasn’t expected to treat his men as individuals, but as coins to be spent when their lives would bring the most value. A good officer would try to make their deaths worthwhile, but did that make him any better than a bad one?

  ‘I …’ He tried to speak, but the words died in his throat. All the time Cathal had been talking he’d sensed unease in the Celts around him, and now he saw why. Agricola’s legions had arrived, a great snaking column of glittering armour and brightly coloured shields breasting the hill to form a second line behind the auxiliaries. Time was running out.

  Before he could gather his thoughts a blare of trumpets erupted from the Roman lines. The hill was shaped like a crescent moon and the thousands of warriors on the far left reacted to the provocation by surging forward until their chiefs brought them under control.

  ‘Tell them they must hold their positions until my signal,’ Calgacus snapped to one of his bodyguard. He turned back to Valerius. And froze. Because the Roman army was on the move.

  Metilius Aprilis watched the little group of riders cross the dip and disappear into the great mass of enemy on the hill. How he despised hypocrites like Valerius Verrens, a small-minded new man who was conceited enough to believe he could shape events put into motion by true patricians. Did he truly think he could persuade the mighty Calgacus to surrender? Of course not, but people like Verrens always had to be at the centre of the stage where their deeds would be magnified out of all proportion to their true nature.

  He had heard the stories. When the name Verrens had first been mentioned as a potential usurper of Agricola’s position he had made a point of finding out as much information about Valerius as he could. It helped that he had friends in the Palatine archives with access to reports from the time of previous emperors. What emerged was a tale of boundless ambition dressed up as duty, cowardly spying disguised as diplomacy, downright treason, be
trayal, side-switching, murder – or more correctly assassination – all clouded by an ill-deserved helping of Fortuna’s favour without which he’d have gone to the executioner’s axe a dozen times over. Aprilis had been ordered by Agricola to watch Verrens’s wife in Londinium, but a cousin on the staff of Titus Flavius Domitianus, then merely the Emperor’s impoverished and more or less powerless younger son, had revealed Domitian’s pathological hatred for Verrens. Aprilis prided himself on having a nose for a coming man, and, powerless or not, a member of the Imperial family was worth cultivating. It had been simple enough to offer himself as a conduit for Domitian’s wrath – he’d done similar work for Agricola in the case of the odious Fronto, Verrens’s predecessor as legate of the Ninth. When Domitian declared himself Emperor after his brother’s early and unlikely death, Aprilis had been certain the order to terminate his enemy would arrive swiftly. Indeed, it had been suggested an accident might be arranged, but before he could put anything in place the suggestion had been mysteriously rescinded.

  Still, Metilius Aprilis was not a man to shrink from responsibility. He had played on Agricola’s increasing paranoia and the disturbing effects of his personal tragedy, and the governor had agreed to his suggestion that he might be placed in Verrens’s headquarters to report on his movements. Part of him knew the transfer from Londinium was as much to do with Verrens’s dangerous shrew of a wife as with his duty to Domitian, but the battlefield was not the place to concern oneself with such minor details.

  What mattered was that Verrens was now on that far slope at the heart of fifteen thousand barbarian warriors and Metilius Aprilis knew the Emperor wanted him dead.