Dreaming the Serpent-Spear

by Manda Scott

  The danger of ambush became noticeably less. The three officers conferred and, soon, a dark-skinned lad of seventeen with curled, Hispanic hair and tendons that stood out on his forearms like pulleys had tied a rope round his waist and then pulled himself along under the bridge and back again. Standing to attention in front of Ursus and Corvus, he was white, and not from the height or the officers’ presence.

  “Someone’s cut the bindings. The hide holding the planks has frayed almost to nothing. The ones who got across were lucky. If the mule had gone over, it would have fallen to its death and taken anyone else on the bridge with it.”

  Corvus had seen it. Ursus should have done. The only grace was that it had been obvious from the moment the prefect spoke and Ursus had already thought through what to do. “I have engineers,” he said. “We can abandon this bridge and build a new one. It will take less than half a day.”

  “I know. Thank you. Sadly we don’t have half a day. The governor needs us with all speed for his assault on Mona and we have no remit to repair bridges that have been sabotaged by the enemy.”

  Corvus was a compact man, slim and fine-skinned with no spare flesh or hanging jowls and only a salting of white at his temples and along the parting of his hair to show that he had aged since the first years of the occupation. There was an air of difference about him so that even now, under the mud and the stains of travel, with his officer’s cloak hanging wet about his armour and his greaves polished to blind the sun, he did not look fully Roman. His nose was more Greek, or perhaps Alexandrian, and his eyes were wider and could hold the world. For nearly two decades, Ursus had felt himself drown in them daily and, daily, had levered himself out again, cursing.

  Ursus was broad and tall and his hair was a very un-Roman pale brown, a legacy from a maternal great-grandfather who had been Batavian and had earned his citizenship fighting under the deified Caesar. He had survived a brief revolt by the Eceni in the east soon after the invasion and twenty years of savage resistance by the tribes of the west and was as good a field commander as any man of his rank. He could take anything the enemy warriors chose to throw at him; it was his prefect’s opinion that made or broke his days.

  “What then?” he asked, too shortly.

  Corvus smiled and raised a brow. “The next bridge is four miles downstream. It’s intact; my troop and their legionaries are crossing now. Bring your men down and follow us. Keep to the rear; the snake will need teeth in its tail.”

  It was an offering, of a sort. Corvus led all his own patrols in person, but he put his second most competent officer at the rear, so that the snake of his line, if cut, might yet strike fast and hard at any enemy coming from behind. It was a place of implicit trust, and assumed the good initiative of the officer placed there, who might well have to act alone. Once, Valerius had been there. It was Valerius who had destroyed whatever little of the prefect’s good humour had survived the winter in Camulodunum. Ursus hated him for both of these, but not enough to reject the gift that was offered.

  “Thank you.” He bowed, as if in the governor’s presence. Ahead of him, a horse shifted, restlessly. When he raised his head again, Corvus had already gone.

  “Why did he do it?”

  The shame of the mule was a passing shadow, almost forgotten in the routines of a nighttime camp. Ursus lay on his back and asked the question of the tent roof above his head. Rain fell steadily, so that the words slipped into the drumming of the goat hide and were lost.

  To his left, Flavius, his standard-bearer, shifted a little, making his camp bed creak. He laughed, sourly. “Who, Corvus? Because you’d have lost two days building a bridge fit for the emperor himself and the governor would have flogged you afterwards for bringing his much-needed reserves late to war.”

  From the dark, an older, wise voice said, “He’s not asking about that. He’s asking about what happened a half-month back that has left his favourite prefect in a foul temper. He’s asking about Valerius and the procurator. About why we lost half a day on private business that will see us all crucified if the governor ever gets to hear of it. He’s asking why Corvus stopped the emperor’s tax collector from collecting the emperor’s taxes. Actually, if any one of us is honest, he asking why did he commit treason?”

  Sabinius, the third of the party, was nearly two decades older than his tentmates. He had been with Corvus from the first days of the Fifth Gauls, and was nearing retirement. His hair was greyer than the prefect’s and his face more lined, but he carried less care. As standard-bearer to the first troop, he was the most senior officer of the wing, under Corvus. He could have slept in a tent of his own with slaves to light the fires and keep his bedding rolls dry. That he preferred the company of his own kind on campaign created a patina of respect amongst the men that drew from them the extra effort required in war.

  Sabinius, too, lay on his back with his fingers laced behind his head and his face turned to the rain-sodden hide of the roof. “You’re asking the wrong question,” he said, mildly. “It’s not why did he do it; that’s obvious. What matters is why did we let him? And why did we not and are we not going to report him to the governor?”

  There was quiet, and some thinking.

  “Are we not?” asked Flavius, thoughtfully. “There’s still time. It might save our lives.”

  Ursus said, “We’re not. He’d be given his sword and an eye’s blink to fall on it, and if he paused long enough to commend his spirit to the gods, they’d crucify him in front of the camp as a traitor and a coward.”

  With surprising feeling, Flavius said, “Good.”

  Ursus snorted. “Are you so tired of life? Corvus is the man who will keep us alive through this misbegotten war against sorcerers and warriors who fight with no fear of death. If he dies, who else is going to get us back east with our skins in one piece? In any case, it wasn’t the wrong question. I still want to know—why did he do it?”

  “For Valerius, you fool. Why does he ever do anything?” The other two heard Flavius turn over and rock the pan of hot stones lying in the centre of the tent that drove away the damp for the first part of the night. Temporarily, the air became warmer, and smelled of steam.

  From the wet dark, Flavius said harshly, “You were both in the Eceni steading. You saw him as well as I did. Valerius was there, alive, with his bloody killer of a horse and Corvus couldn’t reach him.”

  “Would he have wanted to?” Ursus was newer than either of the others. His gut was not yet attuned to the thoughts and senses of his prefect as theirs were.

  Flavius snorted, “Of course, you fool. Why do you think he hates so much coming west when the whole winter has been bent towards it? The light of his days begins and ends with Valerius and he thought the man was on Mona, or at least on Hibernia with the rest of the god-drenched dreamers. Now he knows he’s in the east and may die with Corvus not there to help or to hinder or even to speak to him at the end and heal the damage between them first.”

  The hot pan rattled a second time, less harshly. Sabinius, older and wiser, said, “Don’t listen to Flavius. He’s bitter because he’s been fifteen years with Corvus and the man has never yet invited him into his inner tent. And he’s jealous of you in the newness and innocence of your love.”

  “But is it true?”

  “Of course. Everyone knows that Corvus did what he did for Valerius and he would do it again tomorrow, were the cost twice as great. Both of you can smile at your beloved prefect until your jaws cracks and your eyes leak down your face and it won’t make any difference; his heart was long since given to a wild boy of the natives who rode a horse called Death and had the courage to face down the madman Caligula.” The bunk creaked and the voice was directed more at one man than the other. “Are you happier knowing that than you were before?”

  The quiet stretched longer this time.

  Eventually, Ursus said, “He loved the governor’s son once. Scapula’s eldest. That was after Valerius. I heard about it.”

  “That wasn�
��t love, that was anger and politics and an eye to the future. In any case, Scapula’s son is dead, knifed on Nero’s orders for being too beautiful and too brave and too decorated in battle. Which should be a warning to us all; you can be beautiful and brave or brave and decorated but the gods won’t help you if you are all three. So all we have to do is stay alive and stay ugly and we’re fine. The second is easy. The first will only happen if we get some rest. The dreamers and warriors across the straits on Mona will not give quarter just because you are love-sore and too tired to fight properly. Go to sleep. The world will be the same in the morning.”

  A long time later, when the breathing of the others had settled to sleep, Flavius lay on his back, staring up at the sag of the tent roof and the rain. “It still isn’t too late to tell the governor,” he said, into the dark.

  CHAPTER 6

  “I don’t care if you have to sink the foundations past the floor of the ocean and ship every godforsaken stone one at a time from Iberia, you will build the baths here and they will not slide into the sea at the first kiss of a winter storm. Do I make myself clear?”

  It was shortly after noon and the sky above the fortress of the IXth legion was as grey as if it were dusk. The easterly wind knifing in from the sea was sharp with salt and it scoured equally the faces of Petillius Cerialis, legate of the Legio IX Hispana, the blue-lipped, shivering Iberian master mason who stood up to his ankles in seepage in the trench at his feet, and the five legionaries who stood behind, armed and ready to defend their general against everything except weather, leaking foundations and the intransigence—or stubborn common sense—of the province’s only master stone mason.

  To Cerialis’ left, the winter fortress of the first three cohorts of the IXth legion, strategically placed at the northern end of the ancient trading route known to the local tribes as the ancestors’ way, took command of what height existed in the flat lands north of the wash, spreading up and over the low crest of the hill. Thus advantaged, the watchtowers were given an easy view of the sea, and, regrettably, an equally easy exposure to whatever storms the gods might choose to visit upon the shores.

  There were no storms on the day Cerialis elected to order the building of the baths for his men, only the knife-wind, and the beginnings of trade on the drove road below, and of work in the salt pans to the north, and a fishing boat newly set into harbour, mobbed by a havoc of screaming gulls.

  The wind clearly carried the sound of the birds’ hunger; they drowned out the master mason’s answer entirely. By those watching, the man could be seen to open and close his mouth. He quite clearly shook his head. He spread his palms and raised his brows and began, soundlessly, to explain the details of engineering and bath house foundations to the legate—and then abandoned all effort, not for the gulls or the wind or the growing frustration on Cerialis’ face, but for the hammer of hooves on the stone of the drove road, that became, even as he lowered his palms and turned south with the others to look, the stumble of cavalry horses driven past all endurance on rising turf, and then the shatter of chain mail such as a man might make who has ridden himself beyond exhaustion and whose legs will not hold him upright when he dismounts, so that he falls to his face at the feet of his legate.

  Or, not his legate: the prostrate man was not of the IXth legion. The mason, climbing out of his waterlogged trench, recognized the goat-headed fish of the XXth on the bridle and saddle cloth of the spent horse that stood with heaving flanks ahead of him. Then, late, he recognized the encircled elephant that was the personal imprint of the governor of Britannia on the satchel that lay now on the rank grass of the hillside, its seal cracked open by the force of the messenger’s fall.

  The gulls were quieter now; a new boat had set out to sea and they followed it, spreading their noise elsewhere. The messenger’s companion, a russet-haired cavalryman, dismounted more neatly into relative silence and stood behind his fallen comrade.

  Petillius Cerialis, legate of the IXth legion, drew in a breath of brine-laden air and directing his voice downwards said, “If you are not dead, perhaps you would care to stand and deliver your message?”

  Valerius lay with his face pressed to the wet grass, and realized that he was genuinely winded so that rising was, for the moment, impossible. Through the tunnel of black that sucked at his diaphragm, he heard Longinus say, in thoughtful Thracian, “You’ve ruined that horse.”

  He had not intended to bring Longinus; very specifically, he had given the former cavalryman tasks that would keep him at the steading watching over the routes from Camulodunum by which a desperate cohort of veterans might march. The Thracian’s name was not the first that had come to mind, therefore, when he heard the horse openly following him on the track north to the IXth legion.

  Pulling the messenger’s strawberry roan off the track, he had waited, and continued to wait while a riderless horse galloped past him. Then, understanding, had said aloud, “Longinus Sdapeze. It’s less than six months since you were half dead with a broken skull and that was my fault. I am oath-sworn to keep you from further harm. You are not coming with me to the fortress of the Ninth.”

  “I would like you to explain how you can stop me,” Longinus had said, from behind his left shoulder. “And you told your sister there was no risk. If they don’t remember one decurion of the Thracian cavalry, I don’t see why they should remember his successor any better.”

  A little desperately, Valerius had said, “They think you’re dead. The veterans of the Twentieth held collections for your memorial stone. That kind of word passes.”

  “Then we’ll raise a wine jug to the incompetence of scribes throughout the empire and celebrate the fact that I am very much alive. I haven’t been indicted for treason. If you’re safe, I’m in no greater danger.”

  So saying, Longinus had pushed out through the spring undergrowth. He whistled and the horse, which had stopped, came back to him. Mounted again, he had grinned, and then stopped, and said, “Do your gods see danger in this for you?”

  “No. Not as long as I hold courage.”

  “Do I lessen that courage?”

  “Never.”

  “Good.” Longinus’ smile had been real for a moment, shorn of the dangerous hilarity with which he faced danger. “Then we have a time to be together, before the real fighting starts. I, too, have things to prove before your sister’s war host before they will believe I have joined their cause.”

  He had swung his horse, and his mood had lightened. “In any case, these horses are too good to waste. If I left you with that roan, you’d give it to the barbarian Batavians and they’d ruin its tendons in a month of bad riding. You need me there to keep it safe for you so you have something decent to ride back down on.”

  It had been better riding north with company, particularly this company. Not for the first time, lying prone on the grass at the legate’s feet, it came to Valerius that, alone of his sister’s close circle, he had no honour guard that might surround him in battle, and nor did he want one; but that this one, solid, unwavering friendship, and the steady humour it offered, was a gift to be treasured.

  It was a pity about the horse.

  He could breathe again, which was good. He counted a few heartbeats longer, then pressed his palms to the turf and levered himself to standing. He swayed a little, and it was not all for show. His hand had a welt across the knuckles, as of a sword cut gone awry. His face, too, was bruised, as if he had fallen from his horse onto rough ground, or been hit a glancing blow by a club. Cygfa had done that, not unkindly, but perhaps with more enthusiasm than might have been necessary.

  None of these was remarked upon by the legate and Valerius did not mention them, but retrieved from the wet grass the message-pouch that bore the governor’s broken seal and was about to open it and read aloud the message when he noticed the mason for the first time, and the slowly leaking foundations beside which he stood.

  Beset by a new idea, Valerius knelt and dug his fingers into the turf, testing the quali
ty of the earth between his fingertips. Rising, he said, “This ground will never hold a baths; there’s too much sand to support the foundations. There may be chalk under some of the other hills here, or clay on the higher ground inland. The mason might find it useful to know that.”

  The legate gazed at him, flatly. “You have been here before?”

  “No. But I was present when the baths were built in Camulodunum in the year just after the invasion. The land is similar in some respects.”

  “I see. Then you have been in the province as long as any man living, while I have been here a bare three years. How clumsy of me not to appreciate that. And now you are a messenger. What were you before this, a centurion?”

  “Almost.” Valerius allowed himself to smile. “A decurion. I have only ever ridden for the cavalry. I served in the Fifth Gauls under the prefect Quintus Valerius Corvus.”

  “Indeed? I have heard of him. He has a reputation for extraordinary valour.” There was a rim of yellow round the whites of the legate’s eyes, as if his liver had rebelled for many years against the sharpness of his intellect. Tapping his forefinger to his teeth, he said, “You stoop low, for one who has risen so high. Are there not others of lesser rank who could bear a message from one commanding officer to another in a province at peace?”

  Valerius retrieved his message satchel from the ground. His fingers traced the outline of the beast that been the symbol of Britannia’s governor since Claudius first rode his elephant in through the opened gates of Camulodunum. When he looked up, even the legate was shocked by the haggard weariness in his eyes. “None that are alive,” he said. “Five other messengers were sent ahead of me. None have got through—unless you know already that the Eceni lands are ablaze with the beginnings of insurrection?”