Arthur Imperator

by Paul Bannister

  “Next, we have supplies and transport. Well, we lost our good quartermaster Suetonius and our transport genius Papinius, both of them killed at Dungeness, so I’m putting my aide Androcles into post as supplies officer. We have some decent supply dumps and granaries in the hinterlands of the Saxon Shore, we’ll need to develop more of them behind or along the Car Dyke and north east coast forts. Androcles, work with Allectus on inventory of things like grain sacks, barrels, amphorae and the like, especially on getting them to the ports where bulk supplies are unloaded. Make sure you have a supply of silver stoppers for the oil containers, to keep the contents from going bad. You’ll be busy dealing with negotiators who bring oil, olives, things like that from Spain and Massilia, so be prepared for some uncomfortable travels, too, your soft life hanging around me is over. And, thinking ahead a little, make sure we have good groves of coppiced trees to provide us in the near future with spear shafts. Ash is best.”

  I glanced down at the tabulum on which I’d scratched my list in the wax. “Lycaon, I left you to last because you’re lucky.” The room laughed. They knew he’d drawn the short straw of managing transport. “The good news is that Papinius successfully moved us away from using oxen except for the heaviest equipment, because they’re so slow. You’ll be able to use the Car Dyke as a feeder high road for the heavy sort of stuff between Londinium and Eboracum, so that’s a bonus, but you’ll need more mules than ever to keep our frontier garrisons supplied. Send drovers and negotiators into Armorica and Belgica and Spain, see what you can buy in their markets and get onto the horse farms around Colchester and Aquae Sulis, to boost their stud programmes, we’ll need plenty of remounts. Allectus will provide the coin. Get at least a couple of good Frisian stallions, too. You’ll probably have to go there yourself to get them, they don’t sell to just anyone, but you can pull some rank. Remind them who you are, and what I did against the Bagaudae.” Lycaon nodded, he understood. The Frisians on the face of it were being told of the troubles I’d cleared up for them, but they also had the spectre of my wrath to consider. They’d cooperate, I thought grimly, or else I’d peel their faces from their heads.

  The officers were looking at me, my expression must have given away some of my thoughts. “I want a mobile army,” I told them again, “and if we employ more cavalry, they’ll need swifter support from the transport boys. You did a splendid job in Gaul, maybe we can repeat it, use the smaller rivers here for swift movement of heavy goods. Someone talk to the shipwright Cenhud the Belge. He built a river fleet for us in Gaul, let’s see what we can do along those lines here. I remember that we built demountable sheerlegs so we could load and unload big equipment for transport by river. That should speed our impedimenta transport needs. Investigate that. In summary, all of you, the rules are simple: fight, move, communicate.”

  I looked over at Guinevia, who had been scribbling on her wax tabulum and who would, I knew, have reports and inventories readied for me by midday tomorrow. She’d come to me as a scribe, but when I’d found out her background as a Pictish sorceress who had become a Druid, I’d found other uses for her. She’d used her magic to help sink a Roman fleet, she’d negotiated a peace with the Picts, she’d become my lover and she’d saved my life when I was a prisoner. Near her were my hounds Axis and Javelin, killers of a traitor who had been ready to execute me. The dogs alertly caught my glance where they lay by the door, ready for a command, but I gestured to them to stay. I worked with those dogs almost daily, and when we hunted together they responded to silent signals as well as to verbal commands. It was training that had cost a treacherous Pict his throat and his life. I did not know it then, but those silent signals would save me another time.

  Guinevia looked up and smiled a small smile, and my throat tightened. Her magic was not confined to sorcery, and we had a boy child to prove it. My enchantress possessed powerful spells of many kinds…

  IX Raiders

  Being stranded for three weeks had ruined Iacco Grimr’s already-short temper. The blond Suehan warrior from southern Scandza had sailed south from his home port where in summer the sun never sets, had safely skirted the lands of the Danes and Jutes and slipped unnoticed into the waters off Germania. To avoid the open sea, he had opted to sail inside a long line of barrier islands, and there he and his four longships had met disaster. They had anchored for the night, and had wakened in the darkest midnight hours to find themselves stuck fast on a plain of tidal mudflats, stranded by a rapidly-receding sea.

  At first, Grimr was unflurried. The tide, he reasoned, would return and float them off. But a summer storm blew up, causing the green sea to race in like a hammer blow. The steep, thrashing waves scooped up the flimsy, clinker-built longships and tossed them around as if they were children’s toys. Seven of Grimr’s men drowned, but the rest of the 80-man century washed ashore mostly unhurt. They mustered themselves on one of the long, hook-shaped sandy ridges of low dunes which form an archipelago of islands among vast mudflats. As daylight showed through the lowering skies, the wind-scoured island where they crouched, chilled and wet, was revealed as a low-lying, miserable place.

  The few residents lived in huts made from wind-dried mud bricks, huts constructed on platforms or atop the built-up highest spots of the islands, all of them barely above the reach of the maximum tides. The natives seemed like sailors at sea when the tide was in, or like mariners shipwrecked in a vast plain of mud when it was out. Worse, the desolate, wind-whipped sand dunes were treeless, offering not a scrap of timber for repairs to Grimr’s ships. The food supplies were fish caught by the locals in nets and ropes braided from marsh grass or rushes and the only drinking water was rainwater collected in small tanks that stood outside the natives’ sorry homes. Even the fuel that cooked their miserable diet was dried mud and seaweed, a poor source that reflected their hardscrabble existence.

  Grimr had ordered his own hearth troops to repair two of the battered longships with materials salvaged from the other two, but the work had gone slowly and it had been only a week since he had dispatched one repaired ship south, with orders to capture a merchant ship and bring it back so the sea raiders could continue their voyage. “There’s nothing here but mud,” he growled to his lieutenant, Bjalf Fairhair. The residents of islands further along the chain had fled in their coracles, the two scrawny women of the island where the raiders had gathered had died under the incomers’ brutal ministrations two weeks ago, and the few children were penned under guard to be sold as slaves while their fathers were sent to wade out and fish for their new masters’ food. Once, just once in three weeks, the hungry raiders had eaten seal meat, and even that had tasted good, better than the score or so of seabirds they’d either shot with Grimr’s crossbow or netted and eaten half-raw for shortage of cooking fuel. Work parties had gone out to scour the beaches for shellfish, but without success. The men were chilled, wet and hungry.

  “Fish, feathers, water, and no ale,” Grimr grumbled, but he had no intention of risking his one remaining longship on a journey to the mainland, damaged as the vessel was, in search of supplies. His best option was to wait until his other ship returned with whatever the crew had been able to capture. Then, he could rebuild his little fleet and sail for Britain, where he had heard there was loot and slaves to be taken, even land to be settled. Grimr narrowed his eyes against the battering gusts of wind and blown sand to scan the blue-grey loom of the horizon for the hundredth time. Not a sail in sight. He sighed, turned on his heel and strode to the scanty comfort of the beached longship to wait. Grimr’s men were lighting a small fire near it with ruined spars from their wrecked vessels, and the flickering flames gave welcome comfort. He could see the crouched, half-lit crew as he moved towards them. Another chill, windswept night. By morning, perhaps the others would be back and they could leave this barren place.

  Offshore, unnoticed in the thickening gloom, five dun sails were rising above the horizon. None of them belonged to Grimr’s flotilla, and a lookout’s sharp eyes on one of the in
coming galleys picked up the fire’s small glow against the darkness of the shore. Within minutes, all five vessels were alerted. Unheard in the blustering wind, unseen in the dusk, armed men were sailing steadily towards the telltale beacon, under cover of the shroud of darkness.

  Hundreds of miles to the west, another sea raider had been scanning the horizon, too. Muirch ‘Iron Sword’ Corbitus – his tribal name came from ‘corbita,’ Latin for a merchant ship, but there was nothing of the trader about Muirch – was planning mayhem. The black-haired Hibernian from the big island west of Britannia was eager to sail again on a voyage of plunder and rapine.

  It was almost a year since he and his Scoti warriors had sailed out, around the western isles of the Picts and down the northeast coast of Britannia. They had sacked a monastery and several farmsteads and villages, loaded their oak-ribbed ships with loot, slaves and even a few cattle, then had turned their vessels’ steep prows north for home, through the German Sea and into the Atlantic. Now, as the summer and its calms had just a few weeks to run, it was time to sail again before winter storms would keep them ashore.

  Muirch looked carefully out to sea, no threats there, then turned his attention to the small shipyard where the carpenters and shipwrights were finishing their work. His two smooth-sided vessels, built the Gallic way, were shallow-keeled coasting ships that could take on any sea. Ribbed with foot-thick oak, sided in elm, they had their seams caulked with hemp and cattle hair, all sealed with pine tar.

  The raider had made one alteration to his own ship, Brotherblade, reinforcing the bow with its iron-banded ram that could sink an enemy vessel. “Looks good,” he grinned at the two carpenters who were chiselling the squared post where Iron Sword would slot the carved giant’s head that would offer menace as they sailed.

  “Looks like you,” grunted one of the carpenters. “Big teeth, long hair, big nose.”

  Iron Sword nodded amiably. “Don’t forget the huge ram, just like mine,” he countered, “but I’ll bet those British virgins would rather open to that wooden head than to your purple one.”

  The second carpenter spluttered. “Is it true that all those British women have huge tits?” he asked.

  “Some of them,” said the raider, “have four, two at the front, two at the back. They’re good to dance with, and you always have something to grasp, wherever you’re coming from.” Both carpenters howled laughing. Iron Sword might be a feared warrior, but among his men, he was relaxed and approachable.

  They knew though, that when he pulled on his breastplate and slid the flat blade of his sword from the hanger chains at his left hip, he would be readying for the blood-boiling, fighting madness that had crashed him through shield walls and over the guarded gunwales of the ships he had so often boarded and burned. But, when the leather helmet with its nose guard was off, when the elmwood shield faced with waxed leather was discarded and the ash-pole spear set down, Iron Sword would drink barley beer with the best, tell tales to match the bards’ and slyly drink an incautious husband under the table so he could make advances that were not always unwelcomed by a pretty young wife.

  “They say you’ve left a whole tribe of Scoti bastards in Britain,” said one of the carpenters, carefully shaving a curl of wood from the stem post. “They say there are more Scoti children where you’ve raided than there are British ones.”

  Muirch wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m not saying I always keep my sword in its scabbard,” he agreed. “You can’t let a blade go rusty, especially if it’s a long one.” The carpenters hooted again. “See this?” he said, tapping his right calf. “It’s bigger than the other one because I have to swing this leg over all those women so often. Those god-bothering monks are no use to the local lovelies. They’re skirted half-men who hide with their books and inks, they leave the flock-tending to us. Those British women look forward to our visits, and we try, we try. We are, after all, only here to oblige.” He gave the carpenters a mock bow and sauntered across the beach to view the other boat, where a rigger was braiding a halyard to the leather sail.

  Behind him, the village sat in a fold of green valley that emptied to a shingly beach on the shore of a wide lough. Hibernia was a green and damp place, a place of cool summers and wet winters. White-woolled sheep grazed, a few cattle lowed to be milked and an agreeable scent of peat smoke drifted on the breeze. Muirch sighed contentedly. With this to come home to, raiding and its pounding excitements was a perfect contrast. Now, he had a half-formed plan for his warrior ships’ next excursion. Blood would be spilled, fires would be set and hopefully, he’d have slaves and loot to bring home. There would be a long winter to eat, drink, sleep with his woman and plan the next voyages. But first, he would be taking misery and death to Britain.

  Muirch’s satisfied contemplation was rudely broken. Down the hard pack of the strand walked a tall figure. He groaned. It was the woman Karay, a flame-headed, single-minded troublemaker who had standing in the community, a vicious swinging fist, a fear of nobody and a frequently-expressed ambition that not only the men should go raiding. “We,” she said often in village councils, “are the important part of this community, but we have little part in the expeditions that sustain us. We can do better, and we should go with the men.”

  Muirch was a Celt, and the Celts accorded women high esteem. Those two facts were the bane of his life. He might sing, when deep in mead, of Cwylwch and great Hibernian heroes, but the women of the village, who were usually more sober, would out-sing his croaking male choir with their ballads of female heroes. They would remind him of the warrior queens, Boadicea, who butchered 70,000 Romans, and Sgathaich, who taught the great Cuchalainn to fight, of Aoifa and Niamh Golden Hair and all the other female Druids and warriors who had made the Celts feared.

  Now he faced Karay on the sand, and behind her he recognized Jesla, a blonde Amazon with no fear of men, beasts or the sea. Just behind her, and his spirits sank more, was the slight figure of a third female troublemaker, Caria the Sybil, the village sorceress whose name was used by parents to frighten their children into obedience. Muirch glanced to see if she was carrying her usual totem, an old skull with a few vertebrae in it that she used to cast auguries. Yes, there it was.

  He reluctantly turned back to red-haired Karay. She stared at Muirch from his own height, and he shrank away from her challenge. “You are going voyaging,” she said directly. “And I and some of my women are coming with you.” She paused. “Or we will burn your boats. Maybe we will just pound your heads to paste.”

  Muirch sighed and nodded. He’d been ‘persuaded’ by Karay before. It was like being knocked down and beaten senseless with a war axe.

  X Yr Wyddfa

  Myrddin Emrys, son of no father, sired by a spirit, Druid, sorcerer and reincarnation of generations of Celtic religious power brought to Britain from far Dalmatia, was struggling with his vegetable garden.

  Although he had built his small home of good squarecut stone high on a blustery Welsh pass, the magician had sited it well. A spur of mountain protected it from the east and north winds, its aspect was southerly, and the garden, with its high wall, caught every bit of sun that the mist-shrouded land could offer. Myrddin could have lived in warmer climates, but he wanted to be close to the power of the great mountain Yr Wyddfa, to communicate better with his gods. “I could as well be living in a dark cave,” he grumbled to himself as he tended the cabbage, onions and parsnips that lay in weed-free beds. Those crops were doing well, the cause of his irritation was that for the fourth, or was it now the fifth? year in succession he had been unable to persuade his grapevine to flourish.

  He’d consulted his scrolls and he’d done all that the Romans could advise, but the vines simply would not bear fruit, and his plans to make a syrup of defrutum for sauces and as a condiment were again frustrated. “It will be nettle or damson wine and rowan syrup again this winter, too,” he muttered. “I haven’t the magic trick for these grapes. Some cambion I am!”

  Tall, hawk-n
osed, with long plaited dark hair and shaggy dark brows, Myrddin by repute was the offspring of an incubus and a king’s daughter, but what demon and what king, nobody knew, although it was said he had been deliberately sired, to restore the ancient gods’ hold on Britain. He walked in high places, was aloof with the mighty and carried with him an aura of overwhelming power that could crackle to life at a glance from his startling, crystal-blue eyes. When he wished, his swift and graceful athlete’s movements could become the shuffle of an old and insignificant ancient, a useful act in a crowd that added to his reputation of being able to vanish and reappear at will.

  Myrddin was young for a Druid and did not favour the shaven tonsure that was a uniform of the sect, but his influence as an adept of the sea god Manannan mac Lir and his acknowledged skill at looking into the future discouraged even elders among the Druids from mentioning the matter. When Myrddin came down the twisting mountain pass to the sea strait across which was Mona, home of the sacred groves of his religion, the Druids’ ferryman had always been informed by dream of the sorcerer’s arrival and would be respectfully waiting.

  It was on Mona, called Ynys Mon by the Britons, that the Roman governor Suetonius had trapped and slaughtered hundreds of the sect that was the wellspring of resistance to Roman rule. The act had led to the Boadicean uprising in which the queen of the Iceni had put a Roman legion to the sword and had destroyed Londinium, St Albans and Colchester. The queen was later defeated, but took poison rather than be captured.