In two steps, I was behind the young officer, the concealed knife at his throat, his helmet clattering to the ground, his hair in my hand, yanking his head back. One soldier levelled a spear, the officer was shouting for him to kill me until I jabbed the dagger point into his neck and felt the warm flow of his blood across my hand. “Kill me, and the emperor will have all of you flogged,” I said. “He wants me alive, remember? You, cut him loose.” I gestured at the nearest Dacian to release one of my soldiers.
The officer said coolly, “Do it. We’ll soon catch this scum. They’re going nowhere.”
Our troopers were cut free, we had the officer and the centurion lashed with our old bonds, and it took only moments, with no alarm raised. I recalled the familiar layout of my onetime fortress and chose a discreet route. We walked the disarmed legionaries quietly out of the courtyard, through the transept and, partly concealed by the outer, curtain wall of the citadel, to a windowless stone granary.
The rest of the garrison noticed nothing as we put a handful of our men in with the prisoners under orders to slit the throats of any who tried to raise an alarm, and I led the rest of my raiders openly down to the harbour. I wanted to commandeer a ship, but the tide was out, the harbour was dry. We were marooned, at least for now. I cursed the clowns who had built the city on a harbour that emptied with every tide. It had cost me the siege a few years ago, as the Romans had thrown up a mole across the harbour mouth, sealed out any relief from the sea, and forced the surrender of the garrison.
My plan to sail away was ruined, and I knew we could hardly expect to remain in the citadel undetected for another six or eight hours, so I formed up the squad and we marched boldly back to the granary as if it we had every right to be there. The lounging sentries on the wall and tower above us – slack auxiliaries, I huffed – ignored us.
Inside the granary, we took the Dacians’ cloaks and helmets, but left the young officer his red mantle. We already had the troopers’ weapons. My Britons donned the helmets and disguising cloaks, we bound and gagged the Dacians, draping them in our own cloaks and some grain sacks to conceal the bonds, then formed them up in the small courtyard as if they were prisoners being taken out of the barracks under our escort.
At the gate, the sentries on the arch above us stiffened when they saw the officer. I nudged him in the back with a punching dagger. He knew what to do, and shakily ordered the gates opened. We marched out to the south under several sets of curious eyes and I knew we were going to have only a slender lead.
The positive news was that it was late afternoon, the light was failing and a few snowflakes were suggesting some bad weather would conceal us. We marched briskly south, and after a mile or more, turned abruptly west through woodland that might help disguise our path. We were not more than a quarter mile from the road when I heard horses galloping. The alarm had been raised. We jabbed our still-gagged prisoners forward with more urgency and after another mile, still in woodland, tied them to trees as best we could, using the sacking and their own belts and harness. We kept them as far separated from each other as possible. Any delay in finding them could be vital.
At a jog trot, we headed away, swerving towards the coast once we were out of sight of the Dacians. I needed to find a ship. We knew this coastline, it had once been ours and even in the now-cloaking darkness I could determine our rough position, so we headed for a cove that acted as an unofficial harbour. The locals used it to avoid customs taxes, and I had come across it in my pirate-hunting days.
A notch in the cliffs held a deep channel, with water enough for a fishing boat to ride right up to the rock. Locals had driven iron pegs into the cliffs to tie up their ships, and had continued a line of iron hoops up the cliff’s ledges to form what they called the ‘Via Ferrata’ or ‘Iron Way’. This allowed sailors and fishermen safe passage from the shingle to the cliff top.
Above the cove, mostly concealed by a couple of large boulders, was a primitive gallows hoist that let the smugglers or fishermen haul up cargo or catch. Because the notch in the cliffs was angled, the cove was not obvious from the sea, making a semi-secret harbour the garrison was unlikely to know about, even though it was within eight miles of their barracks.
We arrived at the top of the Via Ferrata, hoping to find a ship in the cove below, but the place was empty. “We’ll go down there anyway,” I said, conscious that this could be a rat trap if no ship came, or if the legionaries discovered us. Staying on the cliff tops, come daylight, would be fatal anyway. We scrambled down and huddled in the corner of a rock chimney to await the dawn. I muttered an invocation to all the gods, and they heard me.
At dawn, a trading ship that had been hove-to waiting for daylight before approaching through the shoals came nudging cautiously in. We saw her before she spotted us, and by that time, only four of us were in sight, weaponless and pretending to be searching the small beach.
When I ruled Bononia, I knew the trader who owned the vessel, a bile-filled creature called Teranes. I despised him as a simpering two-beer queer who used to haunt the military barracks and the nearby wine shops trying to ingratiate himself with young soldiers. He was a petty smuggler and dealer in doubtful goods who used the cove to escape the notice of the authorities. This day, he was unsuspicious and anxious to reach shore.
“Good, glad you are here, we need help, we must urgently offload this cargo,” he said, not recognizing me. He looked startled when I gestured the rest of our troop out of the shadows.
“What,” I asked, “is the hurry?”
The cargo, it turned out, was sacks of grain on top of a consignment of cedar wood. Somehow, the timber stowed deep in the hull of the ship had combusted and had been smouldering for several days. Now, it was toasting the grain, and in time would burn through. Teranes was fearful of his ship sinking, and taking him with it.
“We’ve poured water into the hold, but the fire is still alive,” he wailed. He wanted the grain out of the ship so he could extinguish the cedar wood. I was not so sure, however, that I wanted to unload the grain. If we did, allowing oxygen to the fire could cause it to flare up and destroy both the ship and our means of escape, and the plume of smoke would doubtless being the searchers down on us.
I took a sword from one of my marines, waved it around vaguely and told the trader and his men to get off the ship, we would deal with their emergency for them. The way up the cliff is that way, and good day to you, ladies. I saw that Teranes’ servile crew were secretly smiling at his discomfiture, for he was a petty-minded complainer who did not treat them well.
He stood sniffing disconsolately on the shingle, flinching as my fighting men moved past to board the stolen vessel, but at least we did deal with the emergency for him. We eased the burning ship out of the cove and into the Narrow Sea, on our way to Britain.
At first, we sailed west, parallel to the coast, while I assessed the situation. If it got worse, we could turn for the land and find another ship. I had one of our marines monitor the well of the ship to see how much it was leaking.
“Dry as old sawdust, lord,” he reported.
“Check again,” I ordered. The result was the same. I took a breath, turned the bows north and as dusk began to fall, saw the white coast of Gaul slip beneath the horizon.
The fat negotiator, for that was what Romans called traders, did himself well, and we found and ate his rations and drank his good Rhenish wine. The ship was burbling along, the snow flurries had ceased and we had a crisp, cold starlit night to start our voyage home. Most of our troop was sleeping, I was dozing, wrapped in the young officer’s warm cloak and regretful at the loss of my fine sword Exalter, when something scurried across my feet.
In the moonlight, I saw several more shapes. Rats. Awake now, I looked around the ship. All seemed quiet. Then I heard a noise above the slap of the rigging, a deep creaking noise and a crack. I roused a marine, told him to check the water level in the ship’s well. He took an oil lamp and scrambled away. He came back with a dipstick that w
as totally, utterly dry.
“Check it again,” I ordered, as a cold sensation spread through my chest. The marine was back, the dipstick was absolutely dry, and a loud creak and then a crack split the night quiet.
“It’s the grain, captain,” said the sailor Donac, a salt-stained, battle-hardened northerner who had been with me for years and who had probably sailed more distance than all the rest of us added together. “There’s water got into the grain and it’s swelling. It’s bursting the ship apart.”
Cursing, I ran to the bow and peered over. The seams of the smooth-sided, carvel-planked ship were opening and closing like long mouths. The seawater must be pouring in along the length of the ship, but it wasn’t showing in the bilges because the grain was soaking it up, swelling, and forcing the seams ever wider. The ship was dying.
For long hours, we fought to save her. We battled to free the big grain sacks that were jammed ever tighter against each other, then we threw them over the side, but the water continued to come in, the grain kept swelling and the ship wallowed deeper and deeper as she pushed herself apart.
Wolf light came, and we were exhausted. We could not see land in any direction, and our gunwales were now only a foot or so above the mercifully-smooth sea, but the lightest chop would be enough to swamp her. Even if the sea stayed glassy calm it could only be an hour or so before the end.
I ordered the masts, spars and oars tied together to be ready as flotation aids and threw them over the side, trailed at rope’s end as our life rafts. A few of us might survive in the icy water for a short time after the ship sank, and doing anything was better than not trying at all. We had long since thrown overboard everything we could to lighten the load, all the cargo we could wrench free, the water butt, precious swords, weapons of all kinds, rigging and sailing equipment, even the sails themselves.
The ship wallowed soggily, a dying creature, and I prepared mentally for the feasting halls of the afterlife. I didn’t know if I would be going to the Norse Valhalla, or the Celtic Tir na Nog, but I was ready to cross the Bridge of Judgement and I called cheerfully to the men that soon we’d be warm and dry again, swiving with maidens and drinking with our lost friends in the Otherworld.
Then Donac’s keen, seawise eyes spotted our salvation. “Sail, a sail!” he called. We hoisted a big spar up, a scrap of someone’s tunic lashed to the top, and waved it as best we could. The sail, blue like the Romans’ galley sheets, shortened, then turned towards us. We had been seen.
To our astonishment, it was Grimr in his longship Waveblade, sent out in response to Guinevia’s visions and on his way to the coast of Gaul to find us. The sea god Manannan mac Lir had pushed us east with the in-flow of the mighty Atlanticus so that we were in Grimr’s path. He was quickly alongside, and we reached up gratefully to climb over the gunwales of Waveblade only ten or so minutes before the foundering trader ship slipped quietly under the sea, almost without a ripple.
“To Britain, please,” I laughed at Grimr. “I’m ready for some dry clothes and a warm woman.”
The Suehan sea raider grinned back. “Not sure I should help some escaped slave,” he said, gesturing to my neck. I felt at my throat. I was still wearing the metal slave collar the Dacians had locked onto me. I bore the symbol of a slave, but was going home as the Imperator.
Chapter XIX - Face
Winter was full on us now, and our plans for an early spring invasion of Gaul were being hammered out with our new allies across the Narrow Sea. My chief preoccupation was raising a Christian army in Britain to reinforce our regular troops, and Bishop Candless had come to Chester to report his progress.
“The numbers are there,” he said, stretching comfortably in his chair. I saw that he now wore beautifully-tooled soft leather boots under his cowled habit of fine wool. His hands were soft, I noted when we greeted each other, and the modest silver tau-rho cross he used to wear around his neck had been replaced with a substantial-looking gold one. The bishop seemed to be prospering.
“The faithful have interest in seeing their oppressors defeated, and I think we can raise a substantial fyrd for this holy crusade.” The fyrd, I knew was a British term that had meant ‘journey’ but was used now to describe an army of freemen. It was usually raised for specific defensive purposes, but could be called upon to reinforce the monarch’s standing army.
“My problems are, respectfully, lord,” he murmured, “that we need a regal and military leader who is of the true faith. Many Christians have indicated to me that we, er, have no such leader at the present.”
What the bastard is saying, I thought bitterly, is that I am tolerant of their beliefs but they won’t countenance mine. The same people I allow to worship their own Jesus god are so blinkered they will not follow my pagan self to defeat our mutual enemies, Romans who are slaughtering Christians for their religion and who want to take Britain away from its people.
For decades, Christians had been regarded by the Romans merely with contempt, not hatred, as they were just another cultish religion. Some people even thought the Jesus followers made good neighbours, because they selflessly helped the unfortunate. Their priests instructed them to rescue unwanted girl infants left to die, and they gave females leadership roles at a time when most of the world treated women as possessions. In times of plague, the Christians also routinely put their own lives in jeopardy to tend to the sick.
For a while, only the Jews persecuted the breakaway sect, but the Romans soon joined in. Nero blamed them for a great fire and practised his cruelties on them, setting the tone for his successors. The current Augusti Maximian and Diocletian declared Christians as traitors because the Jesus followers insisted that theirs was the only god, and refused to worship the sacred emperors.
The emperors called down terrible sanctions, the sect were reduced to existing in catacombs below the streets of Rome to avoid capture and thousands of them had been turned into brutal arena entertainment for the masses. Those who could, fled and their faith’s patriarch established himself safely in Alexandria.
In Britain, where we had many gods and where I did not regard myself as a deity, I had not persecuted the sect. Now, I needed the British Christians to swell my army’s ranks, but they had already changed their minds once about fighting for a pagan, leaving me in a desperate military situation. They had to be wholly committed to my cause the next time. I seized on a subject we had discussed before. “What about an icon, a miraculous thing they can follow instead of me?” I demanded.
“That is in hand, lord,” Candless said smoothly. “By a wonderful miracle, thanks to the mercy of Christ, we have discovered the very veil with which Veronica wiped His holy face as he travelled to His tortured death. It will travel at the head of your army and surely will inspire them.” I noted the ‘your’ sourly. Candless wasn’t letting his pagan emperor off the hook.
“Tell me about this veil,” I said, as if I was interested.
Candless cleared his throat. “Aye,” he said, and paused. So, I thought, it’s fake. “When Jesus was carrying his crucifix to the execution place of Golgotha, the saintly Veronica wiped His face clean of its precious blood and sweat, and an exact image of Christ’s face appeared by a miracle in that very cloth.”
“You’ve found it?” I said, trying not to sound incredulous.
Candless simpered and bowed his partly-shaven head. “By a miracle, lord,” he said. “Only through miraculous intervention.”
“I’d like to see this miraculous cloth,” I said, and he looked alarmed. I half expected him to say that the paint wasn’t yet dry, but he recovered.
“We are protecting and preserving it, lord,” he said. “I shall bring it to you as soon as possible.” I nodded. He’d found someone to paint an image on a piece of cloth, he’d probably display it carefully so that nobody could properly examine it, and we’d have the icon that would bring me an army. All was well.
We moved on to the next question, that of equipping this army. My own house troops and our small s
tanding army were well fettled and I employed a host of smiths who were working long hours to produce the spears, heavy throwing darts, arrowheads, helmets, knives and swords that we would need for an army.
Shields, too, needed metal work. Even the smallest bucklers might be made of leather and lime or elm wood, but they required heavy iron or bronze bosses that we used as a striking weapon as we advanced in a shield wall. Some shields had iron rims, too. The bustling smiths also had to produce horse equipment like stirrups, tack and bits as Grabelius struggled to rebuild our heavy cavalry after the disastrous Roman attacks. We also needed all kinds of naval supplies from nails to spar hoops for Grimr’s fleet and artillery pieces for the catapults, wild asses and other ballistae the tribune Quirinus would be taking to Gaul.
I glanced over the lists again, sighing. Everything from hobnails – we used the Roman ‘S’ pattern of nailing the soles of our sturdy marching boots because it spread the body’s weight better and reduced fatigue – to bowstrings had to be made, inventoried, distributed and put into use. It wasn’t just a question of grabbing a sword and shield and marching off to war. Moving thousands of men needed careful planning and I was unsure that we had enough time to prepare and execute before the Romans put down the hordes on their borders and turned their undivided attention to us.
The word ‘swords’ on the procurement list caught my eye, and I groaned inwardly for the loss of my magnificent blade Exalter, taken from me by some unnamed Roman when I was captured in Gaul. That sword had been with me since its birth, when the swordsmith Gimflod had heated and twisted rods of iron, hammered them flat and reheated and shaped them. With weeks of effort and cunning, he had produced a strong and flexible blade tailored exactly to my size and arm strength, even to the ricasso or unsharpened length of blade near the hilt, which I had specified so I could grip to swing it two-handed. The memories took me away from the present.
Candless was looking at me nervously. He had said something I had ignored, but he seemed to think I had heard it and was considering violence on him. “Say that again,” I demanded. He moistened his lips.
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