by Manda Scott
He felt the fraction of Corvus’s nod and said, “My lord, it is almost true. My sister was firstborn of the royal line.” He could have said, I once thought I would be warrior to her dreamer, but it would have made no sense here. “We do not accord ourselves princes as Rome does. I would have been a warrior in my sister’s war host, and perhaps if I had daughters and the other branches of the royal line were to wither, one of them would take her place.”
“A warrior. Indeed.” The eyes flayed his mind. Pain sat at the seat of them, as well as murder. Bán could feel the colours of it, and the pressure behind his own eyes. It was said this man had been a hero, much beloved of his people until an illness struck him down and he became a tyrant. One could imagine what such pain as this, if it were constant, might do to one already drunk on too much power.
His brows were gold, paler than his hair. They arched with practised precision, fair warning of a change in temper. He licked his lips, leaving them too red. With shock, Bán realized they were painted. The emperor asked, “Have you won honours in battle?”
“My lord, I have fought only one battle and I was taken … hostage at the height of it. Before that, I killed two men in fair combat and it was witnessed by my sister. Were she not dead, she would attest to it.”
“And you would become a warrior for Rome?”
“My lord, yes. It is an honourable choice.”
The emperor laughed. Half a heartbeat behind, Galba, Corvus and the attending clerks laughed with him. The Greek—if rumour was correct, he was a freedman of Tiberius’s, passed on to his successor—leaned forward and whispered in the ear of his liege. The emperor nodded and flicked his hand. Whatever had been said was already decided, but the man was a favourite to be indulged in public, not dismissed. The cavernous eyes narrowed. They drew the life from those they touched, leechlike. Bán, who had thought himself already a husk, felt himself become feather-light under their gaze. The painted lips smiled, thinly.
“We, too, were held hostage, in this very country, by men of the First and Twentieth. In time, they will pay for their temerity, but it made of us a warrior. Thus we look favourably on your path of honour, for we know, as you do not, that service in the armies of Rome is the greatest honour available to any man, and that soon the opportunities to win praise in battle will be manifold. Already those who fight to preserve us have been rewarded. You may have heard of our skirmish yesterday…” He paused, giving Bán time to nod and those others around him to make gestures of awe and mild reproof at a famous victory reduced to a skirmish. Throughout the room, men who had risked their lives in real battles murmured their approval.
The emperor raised his hand for silence. “The men of our guard who travelled with us from Rome have thus shown their metal. Our horse guards, however, have not yet had the opportunity to do the same and their loss weighs heavily on us. We have decided to rectify that, and to give you that same chance.”
He crooked a finger. The larger of the two horse guards stepped forward. He was a head taller than Bán, with upper arms that matched the width of the boy’s thighs. His sword was twice the length of Bán’s torso, the blade wider than any he had ever seen. The man himself stank of horse and sweat and hair-grease and when he grinned, as now, he showed the canines and one molar missing from the right.
The emperor nodded benignly. His gaze pierced, like a snake’s. “We are already called Germanicus, after our honoured father. It would please us to add Britannicus to our name, and that province to the empire, thus completing the vision of the deified Julius, our most honoured ancestor. Our commander, Galba, believes that we must not remove our war-hardened legions from the Rhine until the hostile tribes of Greater Germany have been subdued, and this grieves us greatly, for without them we cannot hope to defeat the fiercer tribes across the ocean. Your presence, however, is fortune’s gift, for now we can match those two countries and see which is the winner. Thus will we let the gods and your valour guide our action. If our horse guard wins, we will know that Galba has gauged the metal of the Germanic tribes correctly and we will accept his decision. If you win, we will consider that fortune has smiled on our endeavour in showing us that Britannia is the stronger. In that case, we will take our armies north to march against the ocean and the barbarian tribes beyond it.”
It was spoken for the scribes, to be taken down for posterity and talked over in Rome. Bán fought to find the meaning beneath the words, then saw Galba and felt the waves of rolling anger that spilled from the man and realized there was no meaning beneath them; what he had heard was everything.
Galba said, “My lord would match a boy against a man? A probationary against an officer of the horse guard?”
He was a brave man. Others had died for questioning lesser decisions than this. Bán saw the possibility of it grow and recede. The clouded eyes closed a fraction, hiding the dragging lust. The emperor said only, “He has killed men in battle and that some years ago. He is old enough to kill again. Or to die with full battle honours at the hand of another. What better way is there to live but on the edge of victory? We envy them both. If our health and life were not pledged to the people of Rome, we would wish to take the field ourselves. It will be decided then—tomorrow, before noon.”
Gaius glanced sideways and down at Corvus, who had not moved; who, perhaps, could not move. “You signed his recommendation, I believe?”
“I did, my lord.”
“Then you will see to it that he is appropriately armed. We would not have it said that he was unable to do himself justice.”
They were dismissed. Corvus walked ahead of Bán to the door. Galba spoke as it opened. “And you will find him a mount better than that cow-hocked brown mare if you wish him to live.”
CHAPTER 22
“You can’t do it. It’s madness. He’ll kill you.”
“I don’t think so. The Ubian will do that. But it will be done with honour.”
Bán walked in a shell of euphoric detachment. The part of him that breathed, that had picked over the quail’s eggs in saffron and the delicate, grilled river fish he had been served in Corvus’s quarters, that had listened to the advice from Civilis, that had ignored, time and again, the offer of good and better horses from Rufus—that part had become a wraith, so loosely tied to the earth as to be invisible. It had occurred to him in the night, as he lay in Corvus’s guest room, that perhaps Gaius, of all men, had known what it was to live without a soul and was doing him a favour. Or perhaps the emperor had sucked the last vestiges of life from him and was casting the husk to the Ubian wolf as his gift to a man upon whose valour his life depended. Either way, the result was the same. When he rose in the morning, with Iccius clear at his side, he felt himself floating on a flood-tide of battle fever, light-headed and superbly sensitive, so that his fingers tingled and his skin felt the press of his tunic as if he had gone his whole life naked and today was his first time in clothes. Around him the camp was already drifting away, bleached of colour and with sound that echoed from a world not his own.
Only Corvus had colour—in his eyes and the flush on his cheeks and the scarlet plumes on his parade helmet. He stood in the horse lines with his helmet under his arm, doing his best not to upset the colt, while still speaking against him. His brow creased with the effort of making himself clear without causing offence. “I know he’s your horse and you care for him but he’s not safe. You can barely saddle him without risking your neck. Four times out of five he throws you when you try to mount and the fifth time it is only because he is waiting until you ask him to walk. You can’t do it. He’ll kill you before you ever get to the Ubian.”
Bán grinned. “And then what will the emperor do? A victory to the Gaulish horse? He’ll have to return to the Senate and tell them that Caesar was wrong and all of Gaul is not subservient to Rome.”
“Bán—”
“I know, I’m sorry. Spies are everywhere and the water butts have ears. But what else can he do that he has not done already? I am going to d
ie, that is not in doubt. I would rather die in the company of the Crow than anyone else, that’s all. Your bay mare is wonderful and I am grateful to you for the offer. I have no doubt she could outrun anything the Ubian may have in his stable but this is not a time to run, or to rely on fancy footwork. All I ask is that you kill the colt cleanly afterwards and don’t let Gaius haul him back to Rome to grace his stables. He’s damaged enough. He doesn’t need that to make it worse.”
“Then at least take the sword. Please.”
The sword had been Corvus’s first offer, before the bay mare, and it had tempted Bán more. It was the last blade Eburovic had ever made, given to Curaunios and passed to the Roman as they boarded the Sun Horse all that time ago. Corvus held it out now, balanced across his palms. The bull’s-hide sheath held all the strength of the Eceni nation. The bronze she-bear on the pommel carried the core of his father’s soul. Bán touched the hilt with genuine regret.
“I can’t. I’m sorry. It was made for Curaunios; it’s too big for me. I would not go out there looking like a child and disgrace good Eceni handiwork. Civilis has found me weapons and a shield made for a Batavian youth. They’re my size and they look right for those who know no better.”
Civilis had given him more than that. The leather corselet he wore, and the shirt of chain mail that settled over it, were both gifts from the Batavian. He stepped forward now, a big, shambling bear of a man, rendered suddenly uncoordinated by the weight of what was happening. His eyes were bloodshot from too much drink and the smell of it soured his breath but his voice was steady, as much as a Batavian’s could be when immersed in grief.
“Bán, little brother, you must not go out believing you will die. The Ubian has weaknesses. He raises his arm too high in the backstroke and leaves the space beneath it exposed. If you use the spear first and hard, you can strike him as he lifts his arm and he will be dead before he can complete the blow.”
Bán laid an arm on the man’s shoulder. “Civilis, my friend, if I were fresh from the Eceni heartlands, maybe I could do that. But I have spent four months learning to be one shield in a cohort of hundreds, one gladius in a line of thousands. I could no more fight single combat after that than you could fight as part of an infantry cohort. It will be slaughter, and Gaius knows it. He is looking for a reason to give way to Galba with good grace and we will give it to him.”
“Then why are you so bloody happy about it?”
“Because by noon today I will have joined Iccius and my family. Why should I not be happy?”
The pied colt threw him the first time he tried to mount. It was because Corvus was still there. When the prefect left, despairing, the colt steadied and let Bán lead it back to the mounting block without resistance. At the second attempt, it danced sideways, tossing its head, hating the chiming iron of Civilis’s chain mail. Its eyes showed white at the rims. The red fire in their centres raged as brightly as it had ever done. Bán spoke in Eceni, which calmed him if not the colt. At the third attempt, he was allowed to ease himself into the saddle.
So little of him was present in the lands of the living. Iccius rode with him, mounted on the dun filly, which was good. They rode side by side, each as substantial as the other. The promise of death held them together.
Corvus waited for him with Rufus and Civilis and, surprisingly, Perulla, the centurion. Bán rode towards them, holding the Crow lightly. He was focused entirely on the horse, on the set of its ears, the rhythm of its walk, the tension in its shoulder that would give him due warning before the buck.
“Bán…” Corvus’s eyes held more pain than Bán could remember in any man. The prefect stroked his palm down the colt’s neck. “You look good,” he said. “Both of you.”
“Thank you.” It may have been true. The colt, at least outwardly, was perfect; its hide gleamed like oil-smoothed jet with lightning streaks across it and the white half of its face blazed like frost under moonlight. Inwardly, the beast burned, as it had done from the moment Bán had met it in the arena at Durocortorum.
He pushed the colt forward, already walking the road to oblivion. Perulla stopped him.
“Here.” The centurion offered up a wafer of lead, rolled thin and folded to a square. “It’s a curse,” he said. “I have written his name on it three times. If you drop it, he will fall.”
Perulla had always been the first to denigrate superstition amongst his Gaulish probationaries. He had the grace to look discomfited. Bán took the wafer and pressed it into his shield hand. It moulded itself to his palm and warmed there. He lodged the spear at his knee and saluted as he had been taught when taking leave of a senior officer. “Thank you,” he said. “I will use it well.”
They stood back after that and let him pass.
Drumbeats resonated from the far side of the river. Gaius had decreed that the combat be fought on that side—a Roman games on Germanic ground, proof that the Chatti had been defeated. A cohort of Batavians were in place, lining the marked arena.
Three bridges spanned the water and each was manned by legionaries. Downstream, the Ubian had already crossed the lowest of the three, passing through an honour guard of his brethren to reach it. At the upper bridge, a detachment of Corvus’s cavalry wing, the Ala V Gallorum, joined with Civilis’s Batavian cohort to make a corridor of silent men for Bán. There was respect in the way they stood and he had not expected that. He set the pied colt to walk between the twin hedges of human flesh. The men were quiet for him, knowing his mount’s reputation. They need not have been so. The Crow had changed as they rode towards the river, becoming more fluid, lengthening and softening his gait. For this he had been born, and to ride him was to ride a wolf, or a wildcat, stalking. Bán looked forward between the up-pricked ears, at the right one, which was all black, and the left, which was bisected with white. A breeze lifted the fine hairs at the crest of the mane. The clouds released the first drops of rain.
The Ubian waited at the end of the lower bridge and they rode together towards the battleground. The part-finished shell of a fort provided a backdrop to the arena, making it seem more truly Roman. A stage had been raised at the western side of the space and decked in imperial purple. The officers of the legions had been permitted to join the royal party. The men stayed behind on the Roman side of the river to watch.
The arena was marked with sawdust at its perimeter. Bán and the Ubian stood side by side, awaiting their emperor’s arrival. The tribesman hummed his war-song, ignoring the boy. His shield was of bull’s hide and he wore it slung from his shoulder. The great killing blade hung naked from his hand and his chain mail shivered in the faltering sun. His head was bare after the manner of his people and would be a good target if one could get close enough to make a strike.
Bán shifted the spear in his hand; he had no reason to believe he could win, but he did not intend to have it said that the Eceni did not know how to fight. Peripherally, he became aware of movement at the bridges, of Corvus crossing the upper bridge behind Galba, riding in a knot of prefects and tribunes, of the Praetorian Guard preparing to cross the central bridge on foot surrounding the mounted dazzle of gold and white that was the emperor. A horn sounded and the stamp of marching men rolled across the water.
The Romans were closer to the forest than they had ever been. Ranks of winter-bare larch rasped bark against bark in the growing wind—but there was no wind. Instead, the air carried the stench of ancient flesh, as of skulls worn for decoration. In the dense dark of the woodland, a single spear flashed. The hairs sprang erect on the back of Bán’s neck. On a reflex, he spun the Crow, screaming, “Chatti!”
Hell ran at him from the forest. Warriors flowed from the trees as rats from burning stubble, tumbling, screaming, urging each other forward in a frenzy of bloodlust. This was the brutal reality on which Civilis had based his jest; their capes of tanned skins were not scalps, but whole parts of a human, stitched together; the heads hanging from their belts, bouncing from their thighs, were not the dry skulls of the ancestors, but
freshly dead with the pulped and swollen flesh still hanging from them in strips; their war howl was like nothing Bán had ever heard from the throats of men and it was matched, with a desperate, primal joy, by the Crow. This much Civilis had achieved; the colt knew the enemy, and it wanted to kill.
Still screaming, Bán swung the colt and forced it back towards the emperor. Chaos ruled the river as five thousand men of the XIVth, all in parade dress, jostled into battle formation and pushed their way onto the bridge. It took five men abreast. A legion of five thousand would take half a morning to cross it. The XXIInd were already mustering at the lower bridge, but slowly and without the benefit of battle experience. In the centre, the officers and Praetorian Guard formed into battle formation before the emperor. They were pitifully few. If the Chatti had sent a battle plan, asking Rome to divide her forces, it could not have been done better.
Already the killing had started. Bán saw two Praetorians die, their heads split from crown to jawbone and the grey matter of their minds spilling out. A blade scythed the air by his head. He ducked, stabbing out with his spear, the craving for death overwhelmed by a battle instinct that came from the core of his being. The weapon scored and was tugged from his hand by the falling body. He drew his borrowed sword. Screaming, the colt rose up and killed without effort as one born to it. Bán slashed out with his blade and felt it bite and had already turned away before the man went down. He sought Corvus amongst the crowd and found him, easily. A miracle happened and the Crow went where it was told to go, coming alongside the bay mare.
Spears flew like arrows, darkening the sky. The emperor’s horse went down, threshing. Corvus threw himself from the bay mare and offered it. Gaius mounted. The bay mare, too, went down, the emperor wailing like a child as one of the Praetorian guards pulled him clear of the heaving carcass.
Bán spun the Crow, letting him strike with his hind feet. Corvus held his shield high, sheltering his emperor from the rain of spears. Galba fought to reach them, cleaving skulls with his sword as if it were a hammer, his mouth opening and closing like a fish until he was close enough for the words to be made out, and the governor was saying what everyone had thought but had not dared voice. “Send him back. Send the emperor back. They will kill every horse from under him.”
