Hadrian's wall

by William Dietrich

  Had Arden given it to Galba to betray her? Certainly fortune had deserted her.

  "No!" she protested wildly. "Galba came to Tiranen to plot with Arden. It's been a plot from the beginning to manipulate and discredit you, Marcus-"

  "Answer me! Did you sleep with that Caledonii animal?"

  "He's not an animal."

  "Answer me!"

  Her voice was small. "Yes." She struggled for explanation. "We were drunk from a ceremony, and it was a meaningless thing, and I came back to warn you-"

  "It was not a meaningless thing!" His fist came down on the table with a bang, and its leg buckled. Valeria shrank, fearing a beating. He was in a rage. "By the gods, betrayed already! Our marriage bed scarcely warmed!"

  "You don't understand. I was a prisoner-"

  Marta appeared, summoned by the clamor. Her eyes darted from one aristocrat to another, her expression a combination of curiosity and smirk. This scene would be all over the fort within an hour.

  "Get out," Marcus snapped at her.

  The slave disappeared.

  The praefectus turned back to his wife. "And yet somehow you found the freedom, the moment it entered your head, to ride blithely back to the Wall. To tell me how to dispose of my forces."

  "To warn you!"

  "I've had my warning. From Galba Brassidias."

  "He's the traitor!"

  "He's our agent, Valeria. He's been treating with this Caratacus bastard for years. He fills the barbarian's head with foolishness and keeps the Celts off balance. You had no idea what was going on in that fort. No idea what your secrets meant."

  His contempt stung. Now she was getting angry. "Isn't the emperor ill? Aren't powerful men choosing between him and his son?"

  Marcus didn't reply.

  "Aren't troops being sent to the Continent?"

  "What of it?"

  "You're in peril!"

  "From you! You betrayed me!"

  "I was confused! I came back-"

  "To betray me with your words!"

  "No!"

  "Caratacus sent you to mislead me about the attack. To seduce me with your sex. To make us ready for an attack in one place while he strikes at another. All this he boasted about to our senior tribune, Galba Brassidias."

  "No…" It was a moan.

  "He's used you, Valeria. Caratacus seduced you, and persuaded you to betray Rome. To engineer the death of your husband. To serve as an agent of confusion-"

  She was shaking her head in despair.

  "And breach the Wall."

  "Galba has twisted everything all around."

  "Galba set a trap. For Caratacus and for you. And now it has snapped shut on the first one of you."

  Valeria looked at him in disbelief.

  "We can beat the Celts if we're ready," Galba rumbled. "It's persuading a pitched battle in a favorable place that's difficult. I've convinced Caratacus that I'll help him get through the Wall, but we'll pinch him off and destroy him when he does."

  "See!" Valeria exclaimed. "Galba's going to let Caratacus through the Wall! Let me go to Arden, Marcus! None of this bloodshed will be necessary! I'll warn him, and no one will have to die!"

  Marcus laughed, the bitter laugh of a man who sees his marriage and its political influence in ruins. His wife had shamed him, and what had he ever given her but love and honor? His only chance now was victory in battle. "Let you go to Arden? How you must wish it! You'll rue the day you left his protection. You're a traitor to the Roman state and the destroyer of our marriage, and after the battle I'll deal with you in accordance to ancient law."

  "Ancient law?"

  "A Roman husband has the right of divorce. Of discipline. Of taking the life of an adulteress if her treachery is grave enough, as Cato and Augustus and Constantine have said. You know that. You've risked that. Of losing your life by stoning or drowning or a noose around the neck." She was dizzy with fear. This couldn't be happening. "Marcus-" "You might wish to use a dagger or poison to assuage your shame, but I'm not going to give you that chance. You'll wait here, in locked confinement, for my final decision after the battle. And the next time I let you out, it will be to watch the torture and death of your barbarian lover."

  XXXVI

  As I did in the beginning, once more I depend on the crisp and soldierly memory of the centurion Longinus. He hobbles to me on a crutch, a good sign that infection of his smashed foot has not advanced up his leg. I remember his challenge to me when I chose him as the first to be interviewed. He demanded that I understand Hadrian's Wall. Am I any closer now than I was before?

  "My congratulations, centurion. You appear to be recovering."

  "I'm too old to recover. The best a warhorse can hope for is to endure. So I endure the pain of this damned foot, I endure the bureaucracy of the retirement list, I endure the prattle of nurses, and I endure the dirty jokes of decurions that I first heard two decades ago."

  "It sounds like my interview might be an improvement."

  His smile is wry. "When an imperial inspector becomes amusement, you know life isn't worth piss. It's time to get out of Eburacum."

  "To your farm?"

  He collapses, without invitation, onto a stool. "No, I'd never be able to work it, not as a cripple. I'm selling it. An old trumpeter named Decinus has opened a wheelwright shop and has offered to teach me the parts I can do sitting down. We'll fart and drink and curse together and keep each other from being too lonely. It's not a bad fate."

  Sunset, sunset. Each of us must come to an end, and why isn't the way better prepared? A warrior's death is not so terrible, perhaps, compared to retirement. And yet how ready would I ever be for a soldier's death? "You are a brave man, centurion."

  "You learn in the army to do what you have to do. Afterward, some call it courage." He stretched out his injured leg.

  I make a note to acknowledge his professionalism. This man is Rome. "I want to go back to when the barbarians attacked. I know the outcome of the battle, of course, but not its course. Was Galba really in league with the barbarians? What did he intend?"

  Longinus considers a moment. "Galba was in league with himself."

  "He did not really let the Celts through the Wall?"

  "Of course he did! But he had a grander plan. Galba knew he couldn't beat Rome, not in the long run. Galba knew that even though the woman had been jailed, her return had seeded her husband with confusion and doubt. So he devised a battle plan that betrayed everyone but himself."

  "You approved of this plan?"

  "All the officers did, including Marcus, because it seemed brilliant. It had just one flaw, which didn't become apparent until the fighting."

  "What flaw?"

  He laughs. "There were more of them than we thought!"

  "So it was not Valeria's fault. It was all imperial politics and the shifting of legions and the conspiracies of the tribes."

  Longinus shakes his head. He's not a man to forgive or forget, not with his foot crushed. He's not a man to blame human failings on the maneuverings of armies. "The woman brought Marcus. The praefectus ignited the war and tried to transfer Galba. She inflamed the barbarian Caratacus. And Galba outwitted us all."

  I sigh. "Galba would do well at imperial court." It's an impolitic statement to make to a near stranger, but I cannot resist it. One either plots to survive in Rome, or one stays on its fringes, as I have done. In a sense, my job is a form of hiding. Galba, in contrast, chafed at being on the fringe. "What was Marcus thinking?"

  "That it was he who would win the battle and the glory. That was the genius of Galba's plan. Caratacus, Marcus Flavius, and Galba himself all felt they were on the path to victory."

  "It was a trap for both Arden and Marcus."

  "Engineered by Galba Brassidias." Longinus smiles thinly. "I rode withMarcus and got to see it play out. It's a beautiful spectacle, battle, until it's over and you're left with the stink of the dead and the screams of the wounded."

  I look at his foot. "Did you scream?"
<
br />   "Do you think I remember?"

  We sit in silence for a moment. The gulf between us that he hinted at in our first meeting seems less deniable now. It is the gulf between virgin and harlot, or play and work. I have been around soldiers my entire career, but always afterward: questioning decisions, plumbing motives, and passing judgment on an experience I don't understand.

  What do my reports really matter?

  "What is it like getting ready for battle?" I impulsively ask.

  Longinus isn't impatient with my question. He understands that I truly want to know. "Like prayer," he replies. "Not just that you're praying, though all sensible men do so, but that your preparation for combat is a ritual itself, a form of meditation. I don't know what it's like for others, but my mind is always full. I sharpen all my weapons. I eat sparingly, for quickness and to avoid infection from a stab in the gut. I order and reassure my men, taking their measure, and go over in my head what we must do as a unit and what I must do individually if faced with open combat: each thrust, each parry, and every fighting trick I've ever learned and taught. I dream the battle before I fight it. There's this solemn rasping of blades being honed, and the smell of oil being wiped from steel and applied to leather. The talk is quiet."

  "You are not afraid?"

  "Any sensible man is afraid. But soldiers have chosen their lot long ago and are far too busy trying to survive to let fear overmaster them. Besides, you have your comrades, and you share your fate with theirs. That's a kind of friendship a civilian can never know. We depend on each for our lives, and there's bittersweet love in that."

  "Love? In a battle?"

  "War isn't about hate, inspector. It's about communion."

  XXXVII

  "The Wall, Caratacus."

  The ground had frozen brittle. A skin of ice had formed on the shallow river Ilibrium, which meandered in a swale below Hadrian's Wall. Gray cloud had covered the stars, and dawn saw a few scattered snowflakes drift down, sticking and then evaporating on the brown grass. The Wall itself materialized slowly, surfacing out of ground fog like the back of an undulating sea monster, its serpentine crest marking the horizon. The heads of a few Roman sentries were silhouetted against the sky, but as Galba had promised, there didn't seem to be any concentration of strength here.

  "A good morning for fighting," Luca went on as he stretched and grunted, his breath forming a light cloud. "The kind of morning to hunt or ride."

  "Can we beat them?" Arden asked softly.

  Luca glanced at him. "A fine time to be asking."

  "None in the world has ever beaten them permanently."

  "Battle is no time for doubt."

  "Every man has doubts."

  "And real men don't voice them. It's that woman who's drained you of certainty, Arden, and you won't get it back until you get her back. Get through that Wall and find her. Kill her or marry her, but set things to right."

  "Yes. To right." Could he find her? And if he did, what would she say? Had she fled him or this war? It was as useless to speculate as to spit upon a fire.

  He reviewed their strategy. There were two gates to force open at each milecastle, one in the wall that he could plainly see, the other at the rear of the small fortlet that jutted from the southern side of the Wall like a boxed pimple. Get through those two gates, and all Britannia lay before them. Then wheel…

  "The druids say the Roman time is over," Luca went on. "They've never been so weak, and we've never been so united. Worry if you wish, but I'll eat off Roman flatware tonight."

  Arden thought such confidence tempted disaster. Better to worry. "The cavalry is ready?" The Celtic aristocracy had gathered as a reserve, their heads crowned with fantastically crested helmets, their swords inscribed with runes, their lances carved and beaded with gold.

  "Yes. Everything is happening as Galba promised."

  So: at long last it was time. None respected and feared Roman prowess at war more than Caratacus did. None had more confidence in Celtic courage than he did. At full charge, his clan was unstoppable.

  Now the two would be tested, each against the other.

  Arden wore chain mail but had rejected a helmet, preferring unencumbered sight. Some of his infantry disdained any protection at all, waiting naked or nearly so under their cloaks in the cold, as patient and dangerous as wolves. They squatted by the hundreds, staring at the stone barrier with predatory hunger, the ex-gladiator Cassius among them. They lived for war.

  The bowmen waited nearby, their bows nearly as tall as a man and able to kill at three hundred paces. They'd provide covering fire. Each arrow had been shaped smooth over long winter evenings, given a name, marked with that name, and fitted with a slim iron arrowhead that could punch through armor. The war-maiden Brisa was among them, and Arden would trust her to find a fat target before anyone.

  Still another group were the Scotti, who'd sailed from Eiru. They'd marched in only the night before, painted blue and garbed for war, grim and anxious. He'd never fought with their kind, but they said they wanted Roman blood to avenge a captured prince of theirs, a man named Odocullin of the Dal Riasta. Murdered, they said.

  He envied their grim passion.

  His own excitement, so long anticipated, was curiously absent. The world seemed a plain of ashes, its taste like sand. He'd opened his heart to two women in his life, and both times it had been squeezed like a rag, wrung dry of blood. He'd thought that after Alesia his sorrow had scabbed over and that he could never be hurt that badly again, but then he'd dropped from the oak to see Valeria on her mule cart, frightened and brave and wily enough to use her brooch pin to unhorse him, and with that he'd been lost.

  So he hunted her again, captured her, and introduced her to his world. And just when Arden needed her most, trusted her most, desired her most, Valeria had deserted him for her husband. Chosen an empty marriage over love! She'd even taken her wedding ring back with her. She'd run to warn the Romans and ensure his defeat, to set up his death. And indeed, he longed to die after this betrayal.

  First, he would do all he could to injure Rome.

  And then die, with a Celtic cry in his throat.

  "You really hate them, don't you, Arden?" Luca asked. "That's how you're different from us, who just want gold and wine and silk and cotton and horses."

  "I know them. That's how I'm different."

  He turned and walked to Savia, who had trailed him for protection like a dog ever since Tiranen. He'd tolerated it because, strangely, she reminded him of Valeria. She'd given some of her strength to the girl. Any good Roman would choose duty over love, she'd told him. And any Celt would choose passion, he'd replied.

  "Where will your lady be?"

  "In the fort of the Petriana, I suppose." She looked at him sadly. She knew Valeria had broken his heart, just as he had broken Valeria's with this senseless war.

  "If we get through the Wall and overwhelm the garrison, I want you to find her, protect her, and bring her to me."

  "What will happen to her if I do?"

  What would happen? He didn't know. He feared the moment, even as he desired it. Dread, and anticipation. "By then my sword will be slick with gore and my arms weary from killing. I'll look into her eyes and heart-look at the woman who made love and then left me-and let us both decide, together, what our fate must be."

  Savia closed her eyes.

  Now he must lead them to it.

  Arden walked out in front, where the druid Kalin waited with a raven-headed staff. The barbarians stood as one when he did so, a great host rising up out of the dry and frosted grass like a crop of death. What must it look like from the Wall, this host materializing in the mist?

  They were ready.

  Caratacus raised his sword and faced his men. He'd no doubt of their courage. "For Dagda!" he shouted. His voice floated in the winter air.

  Kalin raised his own staff. "For the gods of the oaken wood!"

  The warriors roared their reply. "For Dagda!" Their shaking spears were like
a field of wheat in the wind, their howls that of the pack. "For the sacred wood!" Neck torques and silver armlets gleamed in the pale light. Muscles, greased against the cold, shone like bronze. Celtic cattle horns were lifted and blown to add to the din, a clamor like the trumpeting of geese.

  We're coming, the horns promised. Stop us if you can.

  Then they charged, hard ground rumbling under their running feet.

  XXXVIII

  The Celts raced toward the Wall in a streaming pack, shattering the thin ice of the Ilibrium as they crashed across its shallows and yelling at the cold. Then they surged up its far bank and scrambled toward the Wall like a cresting wave. Twenty carried a pointed log of forest pine to batter the gate, its snout a great brown phallus of revenge. Dozens more had grappling hooks on the end of coils of line.

  A handful of Romans could be seen at the parapets above the gate now, running this way and that and shouting alarms. A trumpet sounded. Arrows began to sail out toward the attackers, most thunking into shields or sticking harmlessly into the ground. One found flesh, however, and a warrior grunted and went down. Then another Celt caught a shaft in the eye and whirled, screaming. There was a bang and a scorching sizzle in the chill air. The huge arrow of a cocked ballista rocketed into the barbarian charge, crashing into a tier of barbarians and bowling them over like crockery, their shields splintering under the impact.

  It had started.

  The attackers howled and shot arrows in turn, the woman Brisa among them. The steady rain of barbarian shafts took one catapult operator squarely in the chest, pitching him backward, and helped clear the parapet of Roman heads.

  "Rapid aim!" Arden roared. "Don't give them time!"

  One Roman soldier got a shaft through the throat, gurgled, and pitched violently over the wall, landing in a heap in the ditch at its base. A chieftain howled and dashed forward and in an instant the Roman's head was chopped off and thrown down the slope toward the river, bouncing like a ball. A woman of the Attacotti chased it, caught it, and danced by the Ilibrium, holding it aloft.