Arthur Invictus

by Paul Bannister

  He ordered their churches pulled down. A Christian called Eutius who the emperor thought must have been eager for martyrdom defiantly tore down the imperial edict and paid for it by being tortured then burned to death.

  Diocletian next ordered all court officials to sacrifice to the old gods and to consume the meat the pagans sacrificed. Some of the Jesus followers resisted, so the emperor ordered all Christian bishops, deacons, priests and exorcists arrested. Those who did not recant were executed, and Galerius was the most enthusiastic of those who persecuted them, employing some of old Nero’s practices of coating his victims in wax and using them as human torches, or sewing them into blood-reeking animal skins before turning starving wolves loose on them.

  The bloodletting went on across Greece, Palestine, Syria and Turkey, Diocletian remembered. How could people be so stubborn? Now he was facing more rebels on the Danube. These were not religious fanatics, just over-ambitious war lords. It would not be too long before he had them crushed under his yoke and he could return to his palace on the Adriatic. That would be enough. He thought he’d leave it to Maximian to subdue those Britons and bring that colonia back to Rome. It was all so tiring…

  Diocletian’s fellow emperor, Maximian, did not think it tiring at all. A brutal, coarse soldier known for forcing the wives of his subordinates to have humiliating sex with him, he was working eagerly and hard to subdue the Alemanni along the Rhine so he could return to Britain and execute the usurper Arthur who had stolen that colonia for himself.

  Forum Hadriani was too crowded, so Maximian ordered a fleet of barges built in the secondary shipyards of the nearby rivers Meuse and Scheldt and was stockpiling grain and military supplies there for his planned invasion of Britain. He vowed he would stamp so hard on the Rhine barbarians that they would be too cowed to rise against Rome for a generation.

  This time, he would not have to march away from a siege which had been certain to bring Arthur before him, servile and kneeling in chains, to watch as he brutalized then beheaded that blonde witch he kept around him. He would go to Britain and gut the bastard.

  There would be no mercy for this rebel. Maximian forgot everything except a grudge and he had a longstanding one against Arthur. In Rome a decade or more ago, the big Serbian had seen Arthur as a rival for a woman mosaic artist after whom he lusted and the two men had come to hate each other. Three times now, Maximian had been able to almost taste Arthur’s capture, three times the Briton had escaped the Serb’s clutches.

  Once, at the sack of a Belgic citadel, Arthur had been cornered inside the town until the undermined walls collapsed. He had slipped away from the slighted fortress and into the Ardennes forest to safety while an enraged Maximian had crucified half the garrison.

  When the Roman legions had forced the surrender of Arthur’s Gallic sea base at Bononia, the Briton had already sailed away; and when Maximian and his army had finally trapped Arthur inside the ancient earthwork Caros’ Fort in west Britain, the Roman had been forced to lift the siege so that he could deal with serious invasion threats to Rome.

  This time, this time, he vowed, I’ll take the bastard. I’ll kill him so painfully, he’ll wish I was Pollio and was only throwing him to the conger eels; he’ll even wish I was giving him to Galerius’ feral pigs to eat. And that, Maximian thought suddenly, might provide the most amusement. I’ll feed him to the pigs. Alive.

  Chapter VII - Shipyard

  We were dining in Roman style, semi-reclining on three couches in the new tricinium Guinevia had ordered constructed. I disliked the practice of eating lying on one’s side. It was a strain, took too long and invariably involved guests, so I had to make polite conversation while eating. Guinevia, on the other hand, loved it, and found this irritating Roman habit charmingly civilized. For myself, lunch was the best meal, because nobody joined you for that, I could bolt down some fuel and get on with important matters.

  And right now, I had important matters indeed on my mind. I was planning a raid on Maximian’s shipbuilding operations. My spy ships, their hulls and sails painted sea green as camouflage, had crept close inshore of the estuaries of the Rhone and Meuse under cover of dark, and had slipped observation parties ashore for 24 hours before returning to collect them. They had all come back with sobering news.

  The Romans had learned from our foray with fire ships that had destroyed much of their previous invasion force’s vessels, and had sealed the rivers with floating wooden booms of huge logs chained end to end. Our scouts reported that guard boats regularly rowed the lengths of the booms and that shore batteries had been constructed to defend against any attack on them. There were signal towers and several small outpost garrisons, too. We would not easily, they reported, pass those booms to get to the shipyards upriver.

  I chewed my lip. Maximian was no fool, and if he had guarded against a seaward attack, he likely had good land defences, too. My first thought had been to send a raiding party ashore from further down the coast to damage the shipyards and the fleet that was being built there. If, as I suspected, the yards were well-guarded, that game might not be worth the candle. I could see my attack party failing and being butchered.

  My train of thought was in full flow, and I stood from the couch, made my apologies to a surprised Guinevia and her perfumed guests and hurried to my administrative chamber, calling for Grabelius the cavalry commander and Grimr, the big blond Suehan sea raider who had become my best admiral. I quickly limned in my ideas for them: if I couldn’t attack with force overland or from the sea, maybe the option would be to attack from upriver, and sail into the shipyards from the inland side, using the wide rivers as our highway into the heart of the enemy camp…

  Once more, I sent out orders to contact our Belgic spies. They could infiltrate the shipyards, report what they could observe for themselves, talk to whores and wine shop owners, to slaves and locals and to the allies we had among the subjugated tribes of the region. From them, I wanted detailed maps of the shipyard arrangement: the dry docks and locks, the garrison buildings, walls, storage, ropewalks, carpenter and sailmaker facilities. I want to know the strength of the ebb and flow of the tides, and exact times and duration of the water’s rise and fall on certain future dates.

  We needed good information about the geography and terrain, the approaches, escape routes, topography, likely weather patterns. I wanted to know about the quality of the military, their leadership, weaponry, outpost forts, routines, lines of communication and even the attitudes of the locals to their occupying masters.

  And, importantly, I needed to know about the availability of galleys and sailing ships miles upriver of those shipyards, as vessels we could commandeer to carry us into the heart of the enemy. This most vital information must be gathered in utmost secrecy, or we would find ourselves trapped and crucified. And I needed to know where the Romans kept their military vessels and how vulnerable they were to capture when docked in their base.

  I had to carry out this operation with only a small number of men. I could not hope to land 100 men and march them across Gaul unnoticed, but I could lead a couple of dozen on the raid, if we split into two or three discreet groups. I had an idea how we could use so few men to create great havoc, and I knew who could help me make the mission a success. I wrote a long and secret letter to my old shipmaster in Forum Hadriani. The messengers went out, and I turned with a sigh to the administrative matters that were piled up as always.

  This day I was dealing with punishments. By custom, we employed the proven Roman methods of discipline. Any soldier who wounded or killed a comrade was subject to the death penalty. Cowardice, insubordination, conspiracy, desertion, even simply entering our camp over the wall to avoid the prefects or guards, all were punishable by hanging, beheading, death at the stake or consignment to the arena.

  This night, I had seven soldiers from the same tent unit in chains for the death of the eighth man of their squad. He was a persistent thief, and should have been brought to me for stealing from his own com
panions, but they, enraged, had given him such a beating he had died of his head wounds.

  I had no compunction. All seven must die, and I decided to do it by decimation. Usually this punishment was meant for a cohort or century whose members had committed a capital offence. Then, every tenth man would be beaten to death by his comrades. In this case, just the members of a tent unit were guilty. I ordered a century from the offenders’ own cohort to report at dawn, and then to administer the punishment on the perpetrators while the whole legion witnessed their deaths.

  Two legionaries were also on the disciplinary list, charged with rape. The case seemed proved, so I ordered their noses to be cut off. A horse thief was taken to have his hands amputated, a lazy soldier who was obviously not physically fit I ordered to parade outside the orderly tent for three days dressed shamefully only in his tunic. He was to exercise hard, and be tested in a month. If he failed that test, he would be flogged.

  A handful of minor miscreants got extra duties, were ordered to forgo their wheat rations and got small fines levied. One miscreant who arrived before me bruised and battered was charged with vomiting on the centurion’s chamber floor while drunk. I asked sharply how he had come to be so bruised. “He fell from the window, lord,” said the decurion, smoothly.

  I looked at the man. “And how many times did he fall from the window?” I asked in my silkiest tones. “Dismissed.”

  I turned to the next piece of administrative chores, sanitation. The subject was important to me. I knew that when an army camped in the same place for too long, men caught the bloody flux, and Myrddin had told me he suspected it had to do with human waste improperly disposed of. Keeping my men healthy was my concern, so our permanent camp at Chester had drains, good gutters and proper sewers.

  I remembered from my visit to Rome that the Senate had ordered a halt to taking the city’s drinking water from the Tiber, which was also their sewer, and instead brought fresh water from miles away, transporting it into the city in aqueducts. They also said that cabbage kept the plague at bay, and I had put that into the army’s diet, to some grumbling.

  Importantly, I had recently ordered the barracks latrines to be upgraded and the new toilets could seat a whole century of 80 men at one time. The latrines’ stone benches with their row of keyhole-shaped openings were set above a constant stream of running water which flushed the waste into sewers.

  I was proud of the troughs in front of the benches, which also had a flow of clean water, and were used by the men to wash the Kalymnos Greek sponges they used for their personal hygiene. I scribbled a note to commend and reward the engineers who had so quickly completed the improvements. Now, I had to take a look at food supplies…

  Chapter VIII - Approaches

  Intelligence about the Belgic and Gallic shipyards came back quickly. I had sketch maps, diagrams and precise measurements of the harbours and dry docks, of the lock gates, plus exact locations for the timber storehouses where shaped frames for the ships’ hulls were kept. I had several sources for much of the information, which gave me confidence in what I was learning. The Romans were evidently expecting an attack from the German Sea, and had copied the signal towers, lookouts and huge log booms and artillery stations that we had employed so successfully along the Thames river estuary to trap and destroy their fleet.

  Canny Maximian had also reinforced the land defences around the harbours and shipyards, in case of an uprising by their vassal tribes, the spies informed me. But the glaring weakness was so obvious to me that I suspected it had to be a trap. The Romans seemed to have left the approaches from upriver on the Meuse, and on the Rhine which I knew so well, guarded by mere token customs and tax collector posts.

  If it was not a trap, it seemed we should be able to sail right into the heart of the shipyards where the invasion fleet was being built, so long as we came from inland. It seemed too good to be true.

  The next set of dispatches contained one from the man who had taught me my trade as a sailor. Cenhud the Belg had taken me in as a young refugee fleeing slavery after my British village was sacked by sea raiders. I had been taken to Belgica and trained as a sailor before I joined the Roman army as a teenager. Cenhud, a master mariner, had taught me the ways of the great rivers of Europe, the secrets of sailing them and the skills I needed to become what I eventually did, admiral of the Roman Channel Fleet.

  Now, in response to my urgent missive to him, he had left his home in Forum Hadriani and was seeking a suitable place on the Meuse or Scheldt where I could prepare my small force to attack and destroy the Roman shipyards downriver from that base.

  I called in Grimr, my sea-raider-turned admiral who was kicking his heels in frustration at being kept landlocked while I laid my plans. I gave him some simple instructions: take a few mariners, disguise yourselves as traders, go and find Cenhud, establish an inconspicuous base on whichever river Cenhud chooses, locate the ships we will need, and bring together certain necessary components. I will contact you in a week or two with further instructions. And Grimr my friend, I said, make sure you locate a Roman war galley with a battering ram at the prow. We will have urgent need for one of those…

  My next priority was to talk to Myrddin, which involved a journey into the mountains of Wales, a two-day ride from Chester. Guinevia came with me to see her mentor and Druid overlord, and we found him, happily fire-scorched, outside his square-built stone residence at the head of a pass near the mountain Yr Wyddfa.

  His gardener Pattia was outside and met us. “Since those Syrians and Afris came here, he has not stopped with the explosions and fire drakes,” she whispered to Guinevia. “I’ve never seen him happier, or more charred. Or,” she added darkly, “the sheep more nervous.”

  Myrddin’s housekeeper Jogrovea was less sanguine. “He wants to build a flying chair, but all he does is blow up pieces of furniture,” she confided. “One of these days, he’ll either fly off over the mountain or he’ll blow himself to pieces.”

  Myrddin heard our arrival, waved a greeting and gestured for me to join him in the pasture, where he had set up several frameworks and contraptions. “Can’t quite get the ingredients right for this firedrake stuff,” he said vaguely. “It worked well enough at the Humber, but I suspect the quality of the salt petre is different in this batch.” I nodded politely. His explosions had worked a small wonder for us at that battle, causing panic in the Saxon ranks that had led to our comprehensive victory. I could use that kind of help again.

  I explained my mission and the sorcerer nodded. For once, he seemed to have paid attention to another person’s thoughts, which was to me a great compliment, but he had always treated me better than with his usual abruptness, and since Guinevia and I had produced a son, he had been almost benevolent towards me. He liked Guinevia, and I was dragged along in the slipstream of his affection for her.

  “Byzantine Fire, eh?” he said. “I’ve read about that. Very dangerous stuff. It was a state secret, you know, but some fellow alchemists shared it with other sorcerers and the word got out. In certain circles only, that is,” he said, looking smug. “The Arabs got it, you know, and made matters quite uncomfortable for a number of people.”

  “Can you make it?” I asked impatiently.

  “I expect so,” he said, a little distantly I thought, considering he was speaking to his emperor. He must have caught my stiffening expression, for he added: “I can go and look things up, you know.” It was the best I could get out of him, and Guinevia was approaching, so we went inside to continue matters.

  That evening, the sorcerer swept into the chamber where I was writing, waving a handful of scrolls and looking triumphant. He had turned up a formula, he said, for the liquid fire, and had also come across descriptions of its use.

  It was, it seemed, a liquid that the Byzantines sprayed on their enemies, igniting the mix as it left the nozzle of the attackers’ pump. It clung to the surfaces it hit, and was extremely difficult to extinguish.

  “The soldiers who deploy th
is must be specially trained and equipped,” Myrddin pointed out. “It’s like using a war elephant. It doesn’t know who to attack, so everyone’s at risk, and it can literally backfire on you.” I grunted, and assigned a bright young Transjordanian monk called Ancke to make a copy of Myrddin’s instructions, including the formula and any hints for its use.

  I sent a messenger back to Chester to Grimr’s dependable lieutenant, a Macedonian named Iskandur Declarea. He was to prepare at once to take two galleys across the Narrow Sea. He would link up with his commander at the river base we were secretly establishing in Gaul, on either the Meuse or Rhine. I gave Iskandur specifics about the galleys’ cargoes and readied to return immediately to my stronghold.

  The next dawn, we left Guinevia at the sorcerer’s house with two of her maids, Clarea, the wife of the sea wolf Iskandur, and a slender golden deaf-mute slave called Iantread who had been captured on a raid into Gaul. I was taking no chances on Guinevia being kidnapped again, so I left an escort of troopers to guard the sorcerer’s compound, with instructions to camp at a discreet distance and to avoid incurring his displeasure. Then I was back on my big horse Corvus and headed to Chester to begin implementing my plans.

  The galleys that would go to Gaul would carry containers of rock oil, a medicinal liquid that seeped up from the earth, and baskets of the bitumen that formed when that oil dried. It was a liquid well known even to the ancient Babylonians, who had collected it from the famous Fountains of Pitch on the Euphrates River. They used the tarry substance to waterproof the hulls of ships and to fix handles to the blades of weapons.