The great man stood in the midst of it all for a moment. Then he addressed the crowd again. “Friends!” he announced, “as you all saw, this loyal child met with an accident because he ran out to welcome me.” He turned to his guards, but continued in a voice loud enough to be heard by everyone. “See to it that the boy is given the best possible treatment by my own personal physician.”
The murmurs of discontent turned to cheers. Senna pressed her cheek against her son and whispered, “It will be all right!”
Brigius was there now: his face white, and his voice little more than a whisper. He kept repeating, “I just went for a pee. I didn’t even know he’d woken up. He must have gone to look for you.”
The boy looked tiny as he was carried into the fort on a man-sized stretcher. Senna held his hand all the way, and Brigius walked on the other side. The stunned parents of Atto, the loyal child who ran out to greet the prince.
CHAPTER 5
She had barely put her hand on the gate when her father called, “Senna!” He was on his feet and limping towards her: he must have been sitting outside to make the most of the sunshine. “Is it the boy?”
“The boy is fine, Da,” she assured him, tying the gate back into place. “He is doing well. Our landlady is looking after him. The headaches have stopped and the medicus says his leg should heal straight.”
Her father let out a long breath. “The gods are kind.”
“In that, yes.” She patted the dog and followed her father across the yard. A couple of children appeared from somewhere, calling out, “Senna is here!”
He said, “You came all this way alone?”
“We must talk, Da.”
“First you must come and sit.”
Her cousin hurried out of the house to greet her, and Senna had to repeat the good news about Atto again, in more detail this time. When Totia had gone off to tell everyone else and fetch drinks, Senna sat beside her father on the bench and took a deep breath. “All the way here” she said, “I have been praying that the thing I have come to tell you about will not happen. But the signs are not good.”
He propped his walking-stick up against the wall behind him and said nothing. She was glad of his attention: she had been practising this speech all the way here. Asking the gods for the right words to make him understand.
“You will know,” she said, “that there are troop movements all along the border road. The forts are full to bulging with soldiers from everywhere, and more seem to arrive each day.”
He nodded. “This is what we have heard.”
“Everyone hoped they would go away after they beat the Caledonii, but instead the emperor has sent his son to the border. He is a man who shows no mercy.”
“He showed mercy to your boy!”
“Only because everyone was watching and he wanted to keep the troops on his side,” she told him. “I couldn’t tell you this when I sent the message, but Brigius saw the way he looked at Atto. Like a man deciding whether to squash an insect.”
“They say he has a frowning face. A man can’t help his face.”
“That man tried to kill his own father, Da!”
Her father lifted one hand to stroke his moustache. “Perhaps,” he said, “It is time for you to come home.”
“No, that’s not what I meant at all!” Did he imagine she had braved this long walk on her own, keeping to the out-of-the way tracks, wearing Thea’s dull green shawl to blend in against the hillsides, just to tell him she didn’t like living on the other side of the Wall after all? “I meant, this Caracalla has been sent to make serious trouble.”
To her horror he just gave a fond smile. “Ah, young men. More spirit than sense. What age is he? Twenty winters? Twenty-two?”
“He is not a normal young man, Da.”
He shook his head. “Once when I was that age we took fifteen cows and calves in one night. Got them all the way home, too. The owner sent twelve men after us, and all they got for their troubles—”
“—was a good beating. I know.”
“There’s always little to-and-fro raiding after a bad harvest, girl. People have to eat.”
“Please, you must listen! This is not about cattle-raiding. Or about our warriors tweaking the emperor’s nose.”
“Young Dubnus and his daft friends. I’ll have a word with him.”
She reached out to grasp his hand. “The Romans don’t forgive, Da. And they don’t forget. When our people made them hand over that gold, we shamed them. And now they’ve knocked out the Caledonii, they’re coming for revenge.”
Her father paused for a moment. “Is this just rumours? People seeing shapes in the clouds?”
How she wished she could tell him that it was all just opinion and gossip. But both Thea and the Syrian bar girl had heard the same thing from different sources, and nothing Brigius had heard spoke against it. The emperor’s son was here to wipe out the shameful memory of the tribute. To get rid of everyone who might proudly tell their children how they had once humiliated Rome.
“No,” she said. “It is not just rumours.”
She would have said more, but her cousin and Dubnus arrived with bread and a jug of beer and she had to talk about ordinary things until they had gone back to whatever work they were doing.
“These Numidians,” she began. “Brigius spoke the truth. We watch them training. You’ve never seen anything like them. They are so fast! And all done without reins so they have both hands to carry shields and spears.”
Her father nodded. “I have heard this.”
“And people say that they do terrible things to anyone who gets in their way.” She gestured at the scene in front of them. “You are too near the border here.”
“Sometimes we are, sometimes we aren’t. Someone should tell Rome to stop moving it.”
“You need to pack what you can carry,” she told him, ignoring his attempt to change the subject, “and get away before they come.”
But as she had feared, he was shaking his head. “I’m too old to move,” he told her. “Besides, where would we go? Those riders could follow us anywhere.”
“Further away,” she said, knowing she had no good answer to this question. “Over to Brigius’s people. The Votadini made peace with Rome years ago: you could wait there until—”
“The Votadini peace won’t last long if they harbour people Rome wants to take,” he told her. “Besides, how many of us would they hide? Everyone on the farm? Everyone in the family? What about the neighbours?” He gestured towards the nearest paddock. “What about the stock?”
“You could drive the sheep and cattle with you. Trade them for help on the way.”
He placed a hand over hers. “You mean well, girl, but I’m an old man with a bad leg. I’ve good crops of barley and beans coming up in the fields. And if they’re staying, so am I.”
“You know what Mam would say. She would say you have to be alive to eat it.”
“Your mother was a wise woman,” he agreed. “But even without the Romans, how long do you think I have left in this world? Talk to your cousins, if you like. But I’m too old to move.”
“They Romans are coming here, Da! The one they call Caracalla and his men. You can’t just do nothing!”
“I am not doing nothing, child.” He paused. “That is, I am doing nothing myself, but others are doing something. If it is of any comfort to you, our warriors are not the blind men you take them for. There is a plan.”
She felt herself tense. “What sort of plan?”
“A secret one.”
And despite Senna’s pleas, he would not be drawn further. She fought down the urge to shout at him as he rambled on about about the barley crop, and the neighbour whose woman had finally seen sense and left him for a man across the valley, and the sow that had produced eleven piglets and all had lived. She had never known her father so talkative. He seemed willing to tell her anything except what she needed to know. Only later did she understand what was so frightening about his refu
sal to confide in her. It was the sense that he was determined to spare her the truth not out of awkwardness, but out of kindness.
Finally she gave up and went to help her cousin milk the goats out in the paddock.
“I am worried,” Senna said, lifting the main bucket out of kicking range and speaking to the flank of the tethered goat. “Everyone says there is more trouble brewing with the Romans.”
“We are all worried,” agreed Totia.
“Da tried to tell me our men have a plan,” said Senna, squirting a thin stream of milk into the basin, “but I’m afraid he is just saying that to stop me worrying.”
“Oh no,” came the reply. “There really is a plan, cousin. Dubnus says so.”
“Ah.” Then, “Is it any good?”
“It is very good!”
“What is it?”
For a moment the only sound was of milk squirting into basins. Then the cousin said, “Dubnus will be angry with me if I tell you.”
“And I’ll be angry with you if you don’t.”
“But I can’t—”
“I’ll tell him you told me anyway, Totia.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Wouldn’t I?” Senna got to her feet, and heard herself say, “You’d be surprised what I’d do.”
Brigius arrived in the stable yard very early the next morning. “I got your message,” he whispered. “This had better be good. I’m not supposed to be here.”
She drew him into the little room, locked the door and whispered in his ear exactly what her cousin had said.
When she had finished he stared at her. “Are you quite sure?”
“That is what she said. And it fits with what I heard before.”
“This is terrible.”
She said, “Yes.”
“If this madness goes ahead,” he said, “they’ll drag us all into the next world. You, me, Atto, all of your people, the gods alone know how many others trapped in the middle.”
“I know! Do you think I haven’t been awake all night thinking of this?”
He looked at her with eyes that reminded her of their son’s, and said nothing.
“I am sorry,” she said, resting her hands on his shoulders. “None of this is your fault. Or mine.”
“But we’re in the middle of it.”
“Yes.” She lifted her chin. “So. What are we going to do about it?”
PART TWO: DE BELLO BRITANNICO
By S. J. A. Turney
CHAPTER 6
Brigius hurried along the street, shivering. Not from the cold, though the morning still held that biting chill the wind always carried along the wall in the early spring mornings. No, had the world been as dusty and warm and parched as the Numidians’ homeland was said to be, still Brigius would have shivered. Because the information Senna had vouchsafed to him an hour ago would have made a champion gladiator quake. And the conclusion to which they had come and the decision they’d made was simply terrifying to ponder upon.
A former soldier, down on his luck and holding out a begging bowl in a hand with only two fingers muttered desperate pleas as he scuttled past, too focused to notice such things.
The hard-line few among the Maeatae had set their sights on Roman blood and, Senna had claimed, could not be dissuaded. They had gathered a force in one of their old abandoned northern oppida far from Roman influence and prepared to strike a first blow that they saw as a fire arrow which would bring in the other tribes.
He accidentally nudged a table as he turned a corner and a butcher yelled something at him that would have made a whore blush.
There would, Senna believed, be only perhaps a thousand of them, and no more than twice that number, but that would still be sufficient to overwhelm their target and make a statement the likes of which had not been seen for two years, since the attacks that had drawn the emperor to the island. And they were almost certainly correct that a successful strike would ignite the northern tribes.
All of them – the Maeatae and their sub-tribes, the Selgovae and Venicones, and even the remnants of the Caledonii – were still reeling from the advances of the emperor the previous year – and it would take little encouragement to push them into open warfare once more. Especially with the knowledge that the emperor’s vicious son and his foreign lunatics were intent on a new campaign. Only Brigius’s own Votadini seemed likely to stay loyal, but even that might be shaky if the Roman position started to look weak.
But that was the problem. They might look weak to the Maeatae hard-liners, but Brigius knew better. The tribes only looked as far as a day or two’s ride south of the wall. They were only barely aware that there was a legion in the south of the island, let alone dozens more across the sea that could be brought in. They thought only on a local scale.
Brigius thought on a grander scale. Unlike many of his people – even those who had followed the eagle – he had been to the port of Horrea Classis and the great fortress of Eboracum, delivering messages. He had seen the world coming to this island’s shore and monumental fortifications on a scale that made Vindolanda look like a watch tower. The Maeatae might win their fight. And they might rouse the tribes to their side. But all that would do was force the emperor to increase the foes arrayed against them. Instead of a campaign of suppression, Rome would adopt a Carthago Delenda Est policy and wipe the bloodlines of each and every tribe from the very bones of the island. Dubnus and his friends might think they stood a real chance of freeing themselves from Rome. But all they would do was bring about their own destruction.
Initially, Senna had argued with his position. She didn’t believe even a harsh emperor would react so. The tribes raided each other all the time, but only ever sought vengeance and recompense. Not extermination. And with the emperor ill, it would be Caracalla who carried out any retaliation. Would not the man who had been so merciful towards Atto do the same for his tribe?
Brigius had been forced to open her eyes, then. For the sake of her family and the ongoing state of tense peace between occupier and native, he had downplayed what he knew of the prince and his men. He had even lauded them in front of Dubnus. But now he peeled away the layers in which he had wrapped her, and showed her the bleak truth. He told her every story that had passed from whispering tongue to horrified ear in Vindolanda’s fort baths.
How the Numidian cavalry had collected the ears from a whole village in light-hearted competition. How they had burned a farmstead with its owners locked in a shed just for not having fresh bread to feed the passing soldiers. How they had crucified a farmer simply because his cart blocked the road and their prefect had got himself muddy finding a way round.
Senna had listened in mounting horror to every tale, her disbelief melting in the face of Brigius’ serious expression. How they flaunted Rome’s laws and every aspect of the Pax Romana at their whim because they were the prince’s favourites and their commander was untouchable. It was said their prefect had bedded the procurator’s wife the week after they arrived in Britannia, and even the second most powerful man on the island had been force to grind his teeth and accept it.
These were the men who would seek retribution from the Maeatae. These, and their dangerous master. Dubnus and his idiot friends would win one small victory and in doing so bring terrible death and utter destruction down on every soul north of the wall.
The bleak truth was laid bare before them. Dubnus and his cronies had to be stopped, even at a sword point. If they were not, they would be responsible for the death of the Maeatae entire. A surgeon’s cut was required. Slice out the rot to save the body. It had taken only a few more descriptions of the Numidians’ activity to convince Senna of the truth in this. But in doing so, she had forced him to accept a similar harsh reality in return. There could be no hope of peace and settlement in the north as long as the emperor’s Hades-born cavalry were here creating constant tension and committing unrestrained murder.
Both, then, needed to be cut out to heal the wound in this island. Two rabid, dangerous
forces. Only a maniac would think of pitting them against one another. A maniac, or a desperate husband and father who could see the future of his world descending into a sea of blood.
On receiving Senna’s message, he had left the fort through the west gate, slipping an excuse to Motius who’d stood guard. He’d never have obtained official permission to leave the fort and visit Senna in the vicus so soon after several days of leave, but it was far from unusual for the lads of the Second to let one another slip past on personal errands, so long as the guilty man was prepared to shoulder all responsibility. And with the Numidians coming and going like they owned the place, keeping track of permissions was a full time job, anyway. Brigius had told Motius he’d be back in the blink of an eye, but as he’d left the stable once more, his blood icy with the knowledge of what was coming, he’d almost walked straight into a group of the Numidian cavalrymen out causing trouble as was their daily wont. The Numidians needed to hear the news, of course, but not like that. It had to come through channels to be credible; for them to want to take all responsibility and authority off the Second. Slipping away to avoid a confrontation, he had passed between the houses and shops of the vicus and approached the southern gate of the fort instead.
Turning the corner, he peered across at the timber gates that stood open in the heavy turf bank of the fort, and noted the two men on duty at the gate. Damn it. One of them he didn’t even know, and the other was Strabo, who’d not been over-friendly since that little argument over gaming debts a month or two back.
Biting his lip, Brigius scurried out across the path and headed towards the gate.
‘Strabo, let me in.’
‘Brigius?’ His fellow soldier’s nose wrinkled a little. ‘What in Brigantia’s tits are you doing out here?’
‘Long story. Let me in.’
‘Where’s your pass?’
Brigius took a deep breath. ‘I don’t have one, Strabo. Let me in.’
‘You know the rules, Brigius. If you want to leave and bed that Maeatae girl of yours, you need a pass.’
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