Arthur Invictus

by Paul Bannister

  We passed through to the tent lines of the Gallic and Frankish Celts, where I admired the tall shields piled neatly alongside leaf-bladed spears that were stacked like stooks of wheat, and came to the blue-painted Picts’ encampment.

  As I expected, I found Guinevia there, chatting with several of her kinswomen who had accompanied their men to war. She introduced me to her cousins Loisa and Shellea, of the Iones tribe from Bertha, where the legions’ advance into Pictland had been halted by the Pict warriors and their women. I treated them with respect, for these were women who fought alongside their men in battle and even the historian Pliny had remarked on their ferocity. He called that frenzied onslaught of male and female warriors the ‘Furor Celtica.’ It was a maddened charge of fearless infantry in a battle line that had so often overwhelmed their foes that the Celts had never truly been conquered.

  The old Romans also knew of the Picto-Celtic cavalry, and this I was anxious to review. I knew it as light cavalry that usually raced in, lances levelled, behind a shower of javelins. I thought to use my heavy horsemen to break the Roman ranks, and send in the Celts to expand those gaps, so I was eager to view these federates.

  Their horses were small, nimble, hardy steeds for the most part, similar to the mountain ponies of Pictland or the Hunnic steeds with whose tails I had become acquainted as a prisoner dragged behind one. Several Frankish warriors rode into the cavalry lines as we arrived. One cavalry commander, a noble called Davric, seemed ready for war, with three severed heads dangling at his saddle bow, and the bloody hand that the Gallic Celts regarded as a favourable symbol painted on his horse’s shoulder. I recalled the story of a dying warrior who had given his horse a farewell caress, and left his blood imprint there, a symbol adopted later by other warriors.

  The cavalry mounts were bright-eyed, glossy, groomed and decorated extravagantly. Davric and his cohorts were adorned with gold, and carried beautifully-worked, single-edged, curved swords or long, ash-hafted javelins as their main weapon. They wore conical bronze helmets with crests, were lightly armoured in leather, and wore the ubiquitous trews and soft leather riding boots. I liked their casual look of competence. These were proper horsemen and I knew they would serve our army well. I knew too, of their grim reputation as fighters who did not fear death. Their druids taught them that dying was just the mid-part of a long existence, and they would readily choose suicide over surrender.

  Guinevia had told me that the Celts’ belief in continued life was so strong the Armoricans would leave loose a dead man’s shroud bindings at the arms and feet, so the deceased would have less trouble travelling to the spirit world across the subterranean ocean. Even in the northernmost isles of the Druid’s native Pictland, the corpse was dressed with its shroud threads cut for the same reason.

  “Do they really believe we live on?” I had asked, thinking I’d rather we just lolled around in Valhalla and didn’t have to come back here.

  “Yes,” she had said firmly. “Our souls pass to another body. We Druids teach that even the money you have loaned out will be repaid in the next world, and some people throw letters to their dead relatives onto funeral pyres, so the ones who have gone before can have news of the living.” I’d shrugged. I still preferred the idea of Valhalla.

  Davric admired my big black Frisian mount Corvus and I demonstrated some of the horse’s battle training, to respond to knee pressure and to bite and slash with his hooves.

  “His name means ‘Raven’ in the Latin tongue,” I explained. “We bred a small herd for our heavy cavalry from a pair of stallions we smuggled out of Saxony, but we have only a part of that herd and even less of our native horse herd now. We lost much of our cavalry to the Romans in their last invasion and we have not had enough time to breed and train replacements.”

  We talked cavalry tactics for a while, discussing my plan to break the Roman ranks so Davric and his nimble cavalry could enter and exploit the gaps, and he made suggestions about the use of horse archers that I found useful. I came away from our talk encouraged.

  “Too many waves of brave warriors have broken on the legions’ armoured walls, too many cohorts have been defeated because the Romans feed in fresh troops to the front ranks to replace tired men,” I told him. “Nobody has yet matched the legions’ discipline, and our army does not have enough trained troops to do it effectively ourselves. We must simply smash that outer wall, to take away their advantage.”

  The Celt nodded. “If we must die doing it, that is what must be. We will die anyway, one day,” he said simply.

  “I will not spare myself or my men,” I promised grimly. “We can die in Gaul, facing our enemies, and walk proudly across the Bridge of Judgement, or we can die as slaves in Britain when the Romans come back. For myself, I have no ambition to wear a slave collar again.”

  Chapter XXIII - Armorica

  Word had reached Maximian, and his response was swift. When couriers brought news of Arthur’s combined pagan and Christian army of Britons, the Emperor of the West spat on the ground. He would soon enough crush that upstart land thief, and he himself would administer a flogging to the rebel who had caused him so much grief. Then came news that the force of Britons that had dared to enter Gaul had joined with Gallic bandits, suicidal Celts and even some Franks and Picts, and the emperor started mentally redistributing his legions.

  Although it was in Diocletian’s area of control, Maximian had been monitoring the actions of the Huns who had taken Thrace and pillaged Cappadocia. Astonishingly, the khan Busfeld’s horde had inflicted defeats on the Romans, but had been in turn thrashed by the Persians, so had turned west and north. Now it seemed the khan was joining the motley mob of rebels in Gaul and Maximian resolved to act.

  First, he sent to the garrison at Nimes in the south, a city founded for veterans of the legions, and ordered forces to move up the Loire river, to go north to Armorica, at once, quam primum. The spies were telling him that the Armorican queen had cut her garrison to bare bones to reinforce Arthur’s Christians.

  “Send to Alexandria,” he commanded an aide. “Get Trajan’s Valiants, the Second Legion, shipped out to Massalia, march them to Nimes, leave a holding force there and send them to follow the Nimes garrison’s move on Armorica. The Nimes troops should be enough to take it, the legion from Aegyptus can help hold it when they get there. I’ll also order up more reinforcements, so we can not only cut off the rebels from their citadel, we can catch them in open country and cut them to pieces. I’ll send timings to the praetors later.”

  The emperor paused and scrutinized his mental map of the legions and their dispositions. What other pieces could he move to Armorica?

  “Galba’s lot,” he said aloud. “Those fellows he raised to march on Rome, the Seventh Gemina. They’re in Iberia now, in Leon. Get them over the Pyrenees to Aquitania and up to Armorica to join the Valiants. Their eagle could use a walk. Now, we could use some more muscle in the east. Send also to the Octava in Strasbourg, on the Rhine. They’re to meet us as we move there. That’s the Eighth Augusta, symbol’s the Bull, if I remember right. They’re only garrison troops, probably mostly unblooded, but this should be an easy one for them to learn on.”

  Maximian closed his eyes in concentration. He had the Alemanni more or less under control on the Rhine, it was a pity he would not be able to continue pursuing and punishing them right past the Elbe if he turned now to face this threat in Gaul, but it was a fire he had to stamp out, especially if those Huns were joining the federates. He wished he had some intelligence from inside the Hun camp… Well, he couldn’t fret about that right now. He had one set of forces heading for Armorica, the other jaw of the pincer would go with him to face the Christian federation under Arthur.

  Far to Maximian’s west, Busfeld the Hun was considering his own plans. He was part of a great human tide that had swept from the Black Sea, across the Volga and into the territory of the Ostrogoths, subduing even the feared Alans and pillaging mercilessly along the way. The human flood was almos
t unstoppable, but it was not a united force under one ruler. The great torrent of humanity was fractured, with multiple tribes and chieftains, and all had their own agenda. Many thousands had gone their own way in search of better land or plunder. Tens of thousands more had broken off to act as mercenaries; even the Romans had hired a Hunnic army and stationed it in Dalmatia as a buffer against the Visigoths, who in turn had a substantial force of their own Hun mercenaries.

  Busfeld and his fellow khans had parted from their Ostrogoth cousins and swept into Gaul at the head of their tribes. Now some of them were debating whether to continue their progress west, or whether to honour their agreement with Arthur and the federated Franks and Celts and do battle with the Romans.

  “Let the Franks and Celts and Arthur take on Maximian,” said Busfeld. “They can only weaken each other, and we can have the pickings. We should take Armorica and Aquitania first. They have gold mines and rich country. They export wine and oil, hides, fleeces and livestock to Rome, all of it through the southern ports, so those warehouses will be stuffed full. After we clean that up, then we shall see how the Romans and the federation stand.”

  The assembly wrangled for a while, but saw the sense of the khan’s argument. They had no urgent desire to take on a battle they knew would cost them gold and lives. Eventually, all grunted agreement. The Christians and the Gauls and the rest could face Maximian. They could spill each other’s blood, and the Huns would see how weak they were after that. First, the Huns would go to Armorica in search of plunder.

  Myrddin stepped onto the quayside at Mons Tumba, the capital of Armorica, and was greeted by the ruler herself, Queen Emiculea, who asked after his comfort.

  “Thank you, thank you,” Myrddin said, “the voyage was calm. I am an adept of the sea god Manannan mac Lir, dear lady. He always smooths my way.”

  “That is a splendid thing,” said Emiculea evenly, ushering the soothsayer into a litter so he could be carried up the dozens of stairs in the steep-sided sea mount. She paused, struck by a thought. “Oh, but you do not have any holy relics with you, lord, do you?” she asked anxiously.

  “Indeed not,” said Myrddin testily. “Why do you ask?” Emiculea blushed. She had forgotten for a moment that her guest was pagan. She had, however, remembered that her church leaders frowned on bishops and the like being carried about by others when they were transporting sacred icons. A new ruling from the Presbyter of Nicea was that the increasingly self-indulgent and pampered princes of the church must now use their own two feet when carrying relics of the saints.

  “Have a care, there!” the queen snapped at a perfectly innocent slave, attempting to smooth over the awkward moment, and with the wizard’s question unanswered, she stepped quickly into her own litter for the journey up to her state rooms.

  Myrddin, however, did not forget the incident. Later, he gently asked about the sacred image of Christ which Arthur was reputedly carrying at the head of his Christian army.

  “No,” said the queen, “I have not yet seen it, but it is a true miracle and sign of the Lord’s love for us. It is an inspiration to our troops, for with it, they cannot but be victorious.”

  Myrddin bowed his head in acknowledgement. “Dear lady,” he said.

  Chapter XXIV - Alesia

  I heard from Guinevia that Myrddin was in Armorica for some Druidical reason of his own, something to do with the ancient stones that giants had placed there, and I paid little attention to the information. My military duties as imperator and federation diplomat kept me busy trying to hold the anti-Roman coalition together. Only later did I realize that the wizard had foreseen the threat to the seamount capital and had gone there to quietly rescue items he held valuable but which the Christian queen discounted.

  My concerns were with the Huns. Busfeld and his fellow khans were prevaricating and I suspected they had lost interest in the alliance, and were waiting to snap up the weakened survivors of any confrontation with the Romans. This was a cause of huge concern to me. Without the Huns’ large force, and especially without their cavalry, we would be far too weak to take on Maximian’s legions.

  Scanning my army lists did not bring me any reassurance. Because the majority of our allies were ill-disciplined tribesmen, I was relying on a cadre of trained soldiers to break the Roman ranks so the tribesmen could take on the enemy mob to mob, and I looked to my own elite legionaries for that. There were enough to crack the tough Roman nut, but insufficient numbers to win a battle.

  The Second and Third Parthian legions who had followed me, their general, Carausius-turned-emperor-Arthur, to take Britannia from its Roman governor all those years ago were much reduced. My Gallic legion, too, was a shadow of its old self. Our heavy cavalry was still a powerful force despite losses in the last Roman invasion, but our regular cavalry had been badly weakened in that campaign. The British legions would have to depend heavily on the partly-trained Christian army recruited by Bishop Candless. If word ever got out that the sacred icons he was carrying at its head were as fake as his churchly standing, we’d all end up on crucifixes.

  “Please ask the lady Guinevia to attend me,” I told an aide. I wanted to see what Maximian was about, and my Druid had the psychic ability to remotely see what a target human was doing, anywhere in the world. She swept into the chamber within a few minutes and threw me an ironic bow. After a brief instruction, she left to visit her viewing chamber where she used various objects to focus her mind, the favoured one a block of glassy obsidian. While she was doing that, I rode out to consult with our allies, and to set in motion all the necessities for putting a vast host of men and camp followers on the march. The action was not too soon.

  Guinevia returned to tell me she had seen Maximian in a campaign pavilion in a marching camp. He was already moving west, to encounter us. She detailed the terrain, the tent and horse lines, the approximate number of camp fires and a list of details that told me the emperor was coming with strength and was probably already at the Meuse river. We had to scramble to meet him, and after some bickering the coalition of chiefs agreed to leave the next day..

  The Franks went at wolf light, the first of our host, their cavalry ponies trotting eagerly, infected by their riders’ enthusiasm. I saw the commander Davric near the head of the column, and he raised a hand in salute as he caught my eye. He had properly deployed scouts and outriders, his troopers had all slung great nets of forage behind their saddles. His cavalry looked what they were, tough and competent. I thought that after my own heavy Frisian horse units, they would form the elite of our force.

  As the day wore on, the Gauls, pagan Britons, Belgae, Christian Britons and Celts moved out, a flood of humans, wagons and animals all moving steadily to the east, streaming across the landscape in seeming chaos. But it was planned. We commanders had agreed a rendezvous close to the old battle site where Gaius Julius had once turned a conflict into a killing field. On that long-ago day, the rivers at Alesia had run red with Gallic blood.

  In that battle, which was Caesar’s greatest, he had besieged the Gauls who were defending a rocky plateau fortress. The emperor had thrown up two lines, a circumvallation around the hillfort, and a contravallation to face outwards. This double fence 12 miles long encircled the plateau to contain any breakout, and the outward-facing, parallel fence with its watchtowers and water-filled ditches defended his own rear against any relief force.

  Critically, he had included four cavalry camps on the perimeter and deployed his forces inside the double fence. When the besieged Gauls ran short of supplies and turned out their women and children, expecting Caesar to breach the walls and let them go, the Roman refused. He left the civilians to starve, trapped between the Gallic fortress and his own ring of steel.

  It was a decision with which I agreed. I would have ordered the same, I thought. I would not have opened a breach in the encircling walls, it would have invited attack. If the defenders allowed their women back into their fortress, the food supplies would be depleted quicker, if they watched
them starve, their morale would suffer. Either action was good for the besiegers. You have to be hard in wartime.

  It was partly this history lesson that had made me suggest Alesia as the place to confront Maximian. It was a good defensible position, and the history of the place would incite and inspire our Celtic and Frankish allies to greater efforts against the hated Romans. It was also on the edge of our territory, so our allies’ efforts to deny resources to the approaching Romans – destroying crops and shelter, poisoning wells and driving off herds – was more palatable, as it was not their own land they were scorching.

  We saw results in the days we marched east: devastated fields, smouldering habitations and an absence of beasts. The Romans would find it hard to live off this land. Finally, as the sun was setting we emerged from the surrounding forest and came into sight of the rendezvous. Before us was a large plateau, containing an ancient, walled hillfort not dissimilar to my own Caros’ Camp in Britain. We could see the dark mass of farm beasts, the gleam of fodder stacks and the shapes of tent lines inside the high stone walls. Two river valleys surrounded the plateau, making the approaches steep sided and readily defensible. The crumbled remains of old Julius’ encircling moats and man traps could still be seen, but the walled oppidum on top of the plateau drew the eye. This was a good place to defend and a better place to exorcise the ghosts of the Romans who had conquered Gaul. We marched in as the light faded, and we began to prepare for imminent war.

  Chapter XXV - Downpour

  The Emperor of the West swore at the mud-spattered courier who had just given him the message, crumpled the papyrus and threw it to the floor. The task force he had ordered dispatched from Nimes had moved north to Armorica in two separate bodies, and each had collided with a huge force of eastern Huns who were busy plundering the colonia.