Britannia: Part I: The Wall

by Richard Denham

  ‘I am Valentinus,’ the horseman shouted back, his voice echoing and distorted through the helmet. ‘And are you Paternus?’

  The tribune’s horse bucked and pranced to the left, annoyed by the last droning flies of summer. ‘You know me?’ he frowned.

  ‘Of course I do,’ Valentinus said. ‘We all do.’ And the horizon was suddenly thick with a forest of spears, solid phalanxes of horsemen sitting their horses silently and fanning out on both sides of the man in the silver helmet.

  ‘You are everybody’s lapdog,’ he went on, ‘licking the arse of Rome and that whore of the Votadini. What do you want of me, tribune?’

  Paternus could not believe this. The man seemed to know more about him than Paternus knew about himself. But he refused to be shaken. He glanced behind him. His men had taken post in the still-standing tower and behind the crumbling ramparts of the fort. That did not fill him with confidence because he remembered how the Picts had hacked their way into a new fort not so long ago, a fort manned by Romans. But none of these misgivings were apparent as he shouted to Valentinus, ‘I want your head, you renegade bastard,’ he said, ‘on a pole briefly before I shove it up your own arse.’

  There was a cackle of laughter from Valentinus’ men and when it had died down, he said, ‘Go home, Paternus. Go back to the Votadini hovel you came from. You’ve lost one family; you don’t want to lose two.’

  Paternus muttered under his breath every curse he could lay tongue to. He wheeled the horse away and galloped for the fort. Now it would be a waiting game. Valentinus had clearly lost patience with the army trailing him like a flea he could not scratch and now he was doing something about it. The tribune dismounted and slapped his horse’s flank so that it trotted a few yards away and waited, snickering nervously. Bremenium had been well chosen in the days of Agricola. There were no forests on the northern slopes to provide cover for the barbarians. On the other hand, the fort was a ruin, protection in name only and Valentinus’ troops outnumbered Paternus’ at least five to one. He buckled on his helmet and summoned a lad of the Votadini to him.

  ‘Can you ride, boy?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, lord.’ The boy could not have been more than fourteen, his voice still squeaking as he adjusted to manhood.

  ‘Take my horse and get back to Din Paladyr. Tell the queen … Tell her what happened here.’

  The boy looked into Paternus’ face, calm and steady. For the past year he had run behind the man, hunted with him, learned the passage of arms the Roman way. Then he looked beyond, to the huge silent column of barbarians moving down the slope into the valley, the dying sun flashing on their spearheads and axeheads. And he understood. No power on earth could stop that. He turned in search of the horse.

  Paternus had taken up a position in what was left of the central tower where the men of the II Augusta who had built the place once stood, standing guard at the edge of the world as Paternus was standing now. Valentinus’ column was a sight to see, as drilled and Roman a formation as anything that Paternus knew, narrowing at the foot and widening at the back into the swine’s head array that the Romans had inherited from the Greeks. There was a single shout from those ranks, deep and guttural as the spearheads came down and the march forward increased to a jog and then to a run.

  Valentinus had not moved from his ridge. He and a knot of horsemen were watching the outcome of the battle from a safe distance and Paternus knew he had to get through a human wall before he could reach him. He raised his hand. The swine’s head was crossing the flat ground now, making short work of the little stream that meandered through the valley and making its way up the hill. The single grunt was growing in the throats of the barbarians, rising and echoing off their shields as they took the slope. This was the barritus, the war cry the Romans had stolen from the barbarians who had stolen it back again. Paternus had not taught this to his men, but the Votadini had been fighting battles long before the murderous bastard of the silver helmet was in his cradle and they had battle cries of their own. The roar began along their battle lines too, spears thrusting to the sky. The tribune looked at their faces, at men downtrodden for too long, kicked by Roman and barbarian alike. They had been waiting for this moment for months, perhaps years, perhaps centuries.

  ‘I’ll kill the first man who leaves the Wall,’ he yelled at them. ‘Stay where you are. They’ll break on the stones.’ Apart from numbers, the Votadini had all the advantages. They had some protection, at least, from the walls. They had the rise of the ground in their favour and the sun was dazzling low in the barbarians’ eyes. Paternus could see them now; the painted people with their blue swirls; the Saxons with their one-edged swords; the Scotti in their dark plaid trousers. The Attacotti were probably down there too, jogging up the slope, but there was no way of knowing an Attacotti until he was flicking out your eyes with his skinning knife.

  ‘Fire!’ Paternus roared and there was the deep throated thud as the arrows left the bows, the whine and hiss as they tore the air and the thump as they hit the lime-wood shields. Screams and yells punctuated the barritus as men in the front line and the second went down, the third line stumbling over bodies and leaping clear, running at full pelt now for the wall. Paternus knew he did not have to give further orders as long as his archers had arrows left. Wave after wave sailed over the ground, crumpling the first ranks of the swine array and slowing it down. Individual men who had dashed forward out of formation were brought down with arrow shafts slicing through their throats, thudding into their heads. A carynx on the far hill with Valentinus brayed its orders, the ghastly scream like all the furies of hell and the swine array changed formation, swinging to its left to hit Paternus’ men in the flank.

  ‘Archers! Right!’ Paternus screamed, seeing the danger. The Votadini obeyed, sending their arrows hurtling into the barbarians who had nearly reached the wall. Soon there would be no time for the bowmen to reload before the enemy were on them. The Picts were in the front line, swinging huge axes in both hands as they reached the stones, only waist high at that part of the wall.

  ‘Now!’ Paternus yelled to the cavalry he had hidden behind the slope and the horsemen rammed home their heels, driving the tough little ponies forward, spearing the Picts as they tried to get a foot-hold on the stones. Spears slammed into teeth, their crimson points jutting out through skulls and helmets. Swords swung in the afternoon, lopping off arms and splitting heads. Blood was spraying in the early autumn air and the barbarian attack had come to a standstill.

  Again, the carynx on the hill spoke and the swine array split, one half of it breaking the engagement on Paternus’ right and going for the left. The tribune, in the centre, saw at once the problem. In the end, it had simply come down to numbers. He did not have enough men and the archers of the swine array had time to find their own marks now. Out of nowhere, a shaft bit deep into Paternus’ shoulder and the impact threw him backwards so that he bounced off the tower wall behind him and swayed for a moment as he regained his footing. The attack was coming from two sides simultaneously now and Valentinus had enough men to encircle the old fort completely.

  The Votadini cavalry lurched forward on their left to try to stop the latest attack but it was useless. The spears came up from the ground, skewering the horsemen as they tried to negotiate the wall. Men were hauled from their saddles and their skulls were smashed by a dozen trampling boots. There was no quarter anywhere along the wall and Paternus’ centre was collapsing as men ran to support the floundering wings.

  There was no hope of stopping this now. The Votadini were going down in their tens and their scores, dying as the men of the VI must have died along the Wall not far to the south almost exactly four years before. Command was gone and Paternus knew he could not make himself heard above the screams and terrible din of battle. He drew his sword for the first time and, forcing his numbing arm to work, swung into the enemy, scything first one down, then another. His iron slashed the throat of a Pict and lopped off the ear of a Scotti. He lunged for
a third man, but the press of battle carried him back from the wall and he found himself floating on struggling bodies, his sword gone and his helmet dented. His men were floundering all around him and the barbarians were still coming on, over the wall and through the gate, battering the Votadini aside.

  He felt a sudden pain in his chest but did not hear the thud as a Pictish axe head bit through mail and tunic and flesh to crack a rib. He lost his balance and rolled under marching feet, covering his head and waiting for the end.

  Paternus had not heard the blast of the cornicines, nor the Roman shouts of command. Horsemen were galloping in formation across the high ground behind the fort and the barbarians were falling back. He did not see them scatter, leaping back over the bloody wall with the exhausted, shattered Votadini half-heartedly chasing them. And he certainly did not see the bastard on the black horse lift his silver helmet to the sky at the approach of the Roman reinforcements. He knew those shields. They were the Jovii. And this was no scouting patrol. It was not even a vexillation. Valentinus knew it was a whole bloody army.

  The sun was dying as the dead were dragged away and the weapons picked up in the heather. Paternus was sitting on the blood-slick ground, his back against a half-buried milestone. The sounds around him were strange, muffled, far away. So were the faces, even though they were close to him.

  ‘You couldn’t have waited, I suppose?’ he heard a familiar voice say.

  ‘Justinus?’ Paternus’ own voice was as distant as any of the others. ‘Is that you?’ The man was a dark shape against the gold of the sky.

  ‘Yes, Pat,’ the tribune said. ‘It’s me.’

  ‘I’m glad it’s you,’ the man said. ‘Because I was afraid I wouldn’t have a chance to thank you.’

  ‘Thank me?’ Justinus knelt beside his friend, looking grimly at the man’s wounds. ‘What for?’

  ‘Brenna,’ he said. ‘And Taran. And little Edirne. Thanks to you, I’ve got a family again. Tell them I love them, won't you?’

  ‘You can tell them yourself, Pat. We just need to get you back up there to Din Paladyr. Brenna’s herbs will do the trick.’ Justinus held his friend’s hand lightly. It was sticky with drying blood.

  Paternus leaned his head back against the milestone, and opened his eyes a little wider. He frowned, looking beyond Justinus and he smiled, a sweet smile that Justinus had never seen on his face before. His pressure on the tribune’s hand grew stronger and he tried to pull himself more upright. Justinus put his arm behind him and took his weight and Paternus leaned his head against his supporting shoulder. His whisper was faint, but Paternus could just hear it, above the noise of the wounded.

  ‘Justinus, look,’ the Praefectus Gentium of the Votadini murmured, trying to raise his ruined arm to point. ‘It’s Quin. I knew he would come for me. He’s been waiting all this time, waiting …’

  Justinus knew from the weight of his friend’s head that he had gone. He fought back tears and gently disengaged his arm. He looked down at the bloody face and closed Paternus’ eyes. ‘Mithras, also a soldier,’ he murmured, ‘Teach me to die aright.’ He looked up to the sky. ‘Ave, Sol Invictus,’ he said, although he knew that Paternus was saying that for himself by now, hand in hand with Quin and Flavia. Then he stood up, looking at the four battle veterans of the Votadini who stood there.

  ‘Take him back to Din Paladyr,’ he said, ‘the body of your lord. All solemnity, now. All the songs of glory. Tell your queen … well, tell her it was her name on his lips at the end. Tell her that.’

  CHAPTER XXI

  Justinus pulled his army back the next day. The Votadini told him that Valentinus had attacked them with four thousand men. That meant that the bulk of his army were elsewhere; east, west, north? Who knew? They themselves went home, to lick their wounds and fight another day. Paternus was dead; they would bury him as Justinus had asked, on the windswept headland of Din Paladyr. And if they had to die too, it was there they would do it, in their own heartlands, not on Selgovae territory.

  Justinus did not know exactly what had made him come north from the Wall when he did. He left the Victores at Aesica with vexillations out to the west. The milecastles were held by the VI again, as they had been for years, but no one believed that everything was back to normal. Perhaps it would never be. Something had told him to move out the Jovii in full marching strength and something had made him ride in the direction he had, to the sound of battle.

  The five rings of the Wall were five no longer. Theodosius wore one but the Count had long ago left Britannia’s shores and was fighting somewhere in Gaul. The last Justinus had heard was that the man had won a great victory and the Emperor had made him Magister Militum, commander of the army. The next step from there was at Jupiter’s right hand above the clouds. Paternus’ ring would not lie in the grave with him, along with the wine and the salt and the weapons he would need in the Gododdyn afterlife, back with his old family until the new one should join him, unknown years from now. It would gleam on on Brenna’s finger, and then her son’s. One ring glinted on Justinus’ finger as he led the legion back to Aesica, a strong cavalry rearguard halting every mile to reconnoitre. And the other two? They shone on the fingers of two tribunes who were no longer tribunes. One was a politician these days, lining his purse and making speeches. The other had gone mad. And both these men, back in armour though without a specific rank, were riding north with the army of Magnus Maximus.

  For ten days, all was quiet on the Wall. There were no more wild rumours about Valentinus. In fact, there was no information at all. Justinus was beginning to wonder whether Maximus had been right to give the arcani their marching orders; little Dumno was like a good deed in a naughty world. Yes, he would eat any garrison out of house and home, and his eyes lit up at the sight of Roman silver, but he brought useful news. And news of any kind was better than nothing.

  On the eleventh day the cornicines of Magnus Maximus woke the morning and Justinus gave his thanks to Mithras. He would make his sacrifice later, when he had time. There were formal greetings and informal ones, much back-slapping and hugging as old comrades met for the first time in months. There was no room for them all at Aesica, so the leather tents went up and new earthworks were dug to the south to accommodate the newcomers.

  The general sat with his commander of the Wall and all his tribunes the next day, tablets and scrolls of parchment in front of him on his table. Justinus had told him of the attack at Bremenium and that Valentinus himself had been there. Earlier he had told Leocadius and Vitalis about the death of Paternus and a sadness descended on them all.

  ‘We’re none of us the same,’ Vitalis said. ‘Not since Theodosius gave us these.’ He held up his hand with the ring still there. ‘I’ve thrown this away once, but it just came back.’

  ‘So did I,’ Justinus admitted. ‘I was going to bury it at Banna, put it under the earth with good men. Something made me pick it up again.’

  Leocadius nodded. ‘I wore mine in the arena,’ he said. ‘It kept me alive. Or something did. But Vit’s right. We’re none of us the same.’

  Now all three of them sat in front of the general, stony-faced and he told them all their future. They would find this man, the elusive ghost of the silver helmet. And they would kill him. ‘Tomorrow, gentlemen,’ Maximus said, the mastiff rolling at his feet, ‘We are going to collect a debt.’

  Maximus led his men out in a two-pronged attack, one to the north west, the other to the north east. They were five miles apart and riders from the Ala Heruli, the general’s best cavalry, rode between them under the command of Stephanus the German. Maximus led one army, his legions from Londinium, tired though they were from the long march north; and Justinus led the other, his fresher troops from the Wall.

  No one sang that morning and everyone was fully armed. The onagers groaned against their timbers and the ballistari walked alongside them, putting their shoulders to the wheels over rough ground and keeping the torsion ropes greased and ready. Behind them, mules drag
ged the heavy carts of shot, the round stones which the ballistari had been painting all night. ‘This one’s for you, Valentinus,’ some said; others said, ‘Kiss my arse.’ General Maximus’ favourite read ‘This is what eagle shit feels like’; always a lover of nature was Magnus Maximus.

  There was plenty of water on the moors of Selgovae country and hunters went out daily with their snares and darts. Rabbit and venison went into the huge stew pots every night. For three days, Maximus’ column on the left followed the retreating tracks of Valentinus. He was moving slowly north west, beyond Banna that Justinus’ men had been ordered to abandon, into the open country beyond.

  Stephanus’ advance cavalry sighted them first and they came galloping back to tell him. He in turn sent half a turmae west to find Justinus and took the others east to the general. The German reined in his black and saluted, thumping his chest and extending his arm. ‘They’re in a forest, Maximus,’ he said. ‘They’re in a bloody forest.’

  ‘Are they?’ the General threw a sliver of venison to his mastiff, padding along beside him. ‘Well, we’ll just have to smoke them out.’

  He swung down from his saddle and touched the grass. Tinder dry. It had not rained north of the Wall for three weeks and that made conditions perfect. The ground was iron hard for his cavalry and tough going for the pedes, but for lighting fires it was heaven sent. Maximus rode forward with Stephanus and his staff and looked at the ground ahead.

  Valentinus had chosen well. The thick woods , of mountain fir, dark against the morning sky, stood on a ridge. That meant that Maximus’ foot sloggers would have to march uphill into the teeth of whatever missiles the barbarians could throw at them. On the other hand, no reports had reached the general of any siege equipment with Valentinus’ army. It would be the old way, spear to spear and sword to sword. Maximus could not see a single warrior in the trees but he knew instinctively they were there.