Arthur Imperator

by Paul Bannister

  Javelin had the worst of it. His throat was torn, his pelt shredded and a rear leg was crushed by the wolf’s huge jaws, but he too must have fought courageously to allow his litter mate Axis to inflict the killing throat wound that had finished off the wolf.

  “How did we not hear the fight?” Guinevia asked. I shook my head. It could have happened while we were still in the hall, feasting, it could have been a silent, desperate battle as our dogs offered their lives in exchange for the child they guarded. It was something we would never know, and I still grieve for the faithful dog I killed in error.

  We buried Javelin just below the crest of a hill where he had played so happily as a puppy. I ordered a headstone for him, to record his tale of devotion and courage and I made sacrifice to the gods to treat him well in the hall of Valhalla. I especially asked that they give him the crusted ends of beef he loved, and to let him sleep warm by the fireside on winter’s nights.

  Two nights later, I walked alone up that hill, wept unashamedly, and placed a bone, with well-cooked beef attached, on my hound’s grave. “Go into your long sleep, my friend,” I said, and my heart tore as it never had for any human.

  Axis recovered well from his wounds, although the marks of the terrible lacerations he had sustained could be seen through his glossy fur, and his broken forepaw, which the medic had set well, slowed his speed so I would joke with him that we were a pair of cripples together. He would look up at me with his wise brown eyes when I fondled his ears or chest and I swear he forgave me. I shall have to wait until I end my life and cross the bridge of swords to see if Javelin will lick my hands in forgiveness. Somehow, I think he will.

  XXIX Eidyn

  Years before, I had served in the Roman Army, so it was natural that I ordered my own troops in the disciplines and methods of the men who were now my enemies. We trained as the legions did, we marched, made camp and fought in their time-proven victorious ways. We used their equipment and armour, practised their hygiene and dietary methods. Like the Mules of Marius, the emperor who reformed the army of Rome, my soldiers carried full packs and tools that totalled the weight of a small man, yet they could cover 40 miles’ march in a single day and were still able to dig and establish a defensible camp each night.

  So it was a familiar experience when I rode out of Eboracum at the head of a legion, headed north to put down the Picts. We tramped along the paved military highway of Dere Street in disciplined columns, obedient to the cadence of the centurions who counted the number of paces we made each day. We passed through the garrison towns of Caractonium and Corla and arrived once more at the stone frontier that was the Rampart of the Augustus Hadrian.

  This gated wall that was once the northern extent of the vast Roman Empire was built by the Spaniard Publius Aelius Hadrianus, cousin and godson of the Emperor Trajan, more as a customs barrier than as a defence line. The Wall of square-cut stone ran from sea to sea, was three times the height of a man, and was fronted by a vee-shaped deep ditch that made it all but impassable to invaders, even if they had been able to overcome the garrisons that stood every third of a mile along its length. There was even a flat-bottomed ditch inside a double berm a short way south of the wall, to protect the garrisons from any southern attack. It was a magnificent piece of engineering, but for all its imposing splendour, the Wall that was also called the Aelian Rampart had seen only a short term of service. It was replaced after just 16 years by the more northerly turf-and-timber wall of Antoninus, which stretched from firth to firth across the waist of Pictland.

  I had seen the Antonine Wall before, finding it sadly depleted, a ditch grown so shallow a marching man need hardly break stride to cross it. It was no defensive barrier, but that was immaterial. I intended to march beyond it into the heart of the rebel territory, to take sword and fire to the pesky insurgents. They had slipped away from my forces several years before, and we had wasted much effort for little return. This time, I vowed, would be different. And it was.

  Before I crossed the Antonine, though, I had business with natives south of its crumbled barrier, so I quick-marched my legion through the land of the Votadini, surprising them before they could rally enough men to delay us, and we soon came to their craggy fortress south of the great firth. The ancient stronghold called Dun Eidyn was steep-faced volcanic rock on three sides, but the eastern approach was a sloping ramp mostly occupied by houses. We simply fired the town and as the wind was from the east, followed through the smoke and over the rudimentary wooden defences to slaughter the small force of Picts who had taken refuge there.

  With their fortress taken, I wanted to wait for my second legion’s approach from Chester, and viewed the vast rock as a possible camp. It was unsuitable. After a dry summer, there was no significant water supply on the hilltop. I recalled a natural fortress half a day’s march east where an impressive rampart had been built on an old oppidum, or hill fort, and I had sent a small detachment to seize and hold it as an outpost to overlook the firth and the road alongside. There was a brook there, which promised a natural aquifer, and a river was nearby, which would be excellent as both defensive feature and water supply. The hill was the site of a major settlement of the Votadini called Dunpelder, so there would be farmers, traders and others with food and supplies. We moved back there, leaving a holding force in Eidyn’s destroyed burh, to wait a month or so for the rest of our forces, and especially of our cavalry, who had to come from the southern downs of Britain.

  When the first crisp mornings signalled the beginning of autumn, my two northern legions were finally together. We had a small cavalry force under my longtime tribune Cragus, we had an array of ballistae and a siege train and we even had a small naval force under Grimr the Suehan anchored in the nearby firth. Our scouts had been busy and brought news that the Pict chieftains had established their main force on another volcanic crag, north of the Antonine, where it dominated the lowest crossing of the river that fed the wide firth.

  I knew the place. On a previous expedition, we had occupied the crag, which was called Snowdoun or Stirling, and Guinevia had sacrificed a human in the old Mithraic temple there. I remembered the event clearly; a grossly fat mule trader whose guts had been spilled so Guinevia could read them for an augury. The wretch had died whimpering for his mother, but the signs were good, and Druids knew that any offering of a human soul to the gods would be regarded with great favour. Later, I’d credit that sacrifice with saving my life after I escaped execution as a captive. If that summit we’d occupied were defended with any competence, it would be a long and difficult task to take it, siege engines or no. Three centuries before, it had been so established as a strongpoint that even the Romans had bypassed it, leaving it in the hands of the local tribe, and the men from Italia had made their own fortified camp eight miles away.

  We marched to Snowdoun, where the Picts cowered behind their vast dolerite walls. We encamped and built a long double palisade atop ramparts and ditches around the base of the towering rock to act both as containment for the besieged and a defensive wall for ourselves if we were attacked. We made a few minor attempts to storm the walls, and then resigned ourselves to a long siege.

  In theory, the besiegers should always win, but it would take time, and winter was on its inexorable approach. I did not relish the idea of winter quarters on the river plain under that towering upthrust of rock, but we went through the motions. We pulled down houses on the approach ramp for materials to use for our works and pushed great wicker baskets forward, filling them with dirt and rocks to make a protective wall against the citadel’s few archers. We located the two wells just outside the walls and filled them to deny water to the besieged. We began constructing platforms for the siege engines we had brought with us, cutting down an entire copse nearby for the timber we required.

  We had needs: we needed siege towers from which we could shoot down onto the defenders’ walls, and our engineers were busy constructing the ramps that would let us roll those great towers up close. We needed he
avy-roofed galleries that we could wheel close to the walls, to protect our battering ram crews from the rocks that would be rained down at them; we needed to fill the ditch outside the wall so we could wheel our rams up to the stones through which they must smash. And above, all, we needed time, but we would not have enough before the freezing weather came, that I knew.

  I was directing the positioning of a battery of wild asses, giant whiplike ballistae that could hurl rocks or pots of blazing pitch over the walls, when Guinevia approached. She looked drawn and weary, for she had been less than her sparkling self for months, since her kidnap and rescue. She wasted no time. “Myrddin is coming,” she said quietly. “I sent for him.”

  I nodded. I knew she had somehow communicated a psychic message to her mentor wizard, just as she could send her mind to view far places. “He will make this fortress fall,” she said simply. Mentally, I raised an eyebrow. Myrddin might be a powerful wizard, but he was no military engineer. With our best efforts, fair weather and no interference, it could be weeks or months before we could breach these defences.

  Guinevia read my thoughts. “He can do it,” she said flatly.

  I shrugged. “Any help he can give will be useful,” I ventured.

  The druidess looked at me coldly, in a way she had never viewed me before. “I told you he will make this fortress fall, and I have seen it happen. It will come before the first snow.”

  Sometimes, you have to just nod agreement, which is what I did, before turning back to the more earthly considerations of throwing large river stones over the walls of the fortress. A lead missile the size of a hen’s egg flattened against the rock near where I stood, and I brought myself quickly back to the present. “Behind here,” I said, tugging Guinevia into the shelter of an earth-filled basket.

  She nodded indifferently. “Myrddin is close. He will be here in the morning.”

  And so he was. The familiar long, dark figure strode across the mud to my tent, his crystal-blue eyes sharp under his dark, shaggy brows, a hood concealing the long plait of oiled hair that was his vanity. As always, he carried with him an aura of power and authority, and as always I wondered about this son of no father whose sire was a spirit demon. “Breakfast, Arthur, breakfast,” he said by way of greeting. I called for a slave, who soon brought oat cakes, cold mutton and a flask of the thin red wine from Gaul that was the best we had. The wizard ate, then asked to look around our camp.

  The place was a maze of muddy earthworks, a jumble of construction timbers. Wooden platforms at the end of the camp closest to the heavy gates of the stronghold supported a battery of big catapults that were firing arrow-headed bolts or rounded river stones at the citadel’s iron-strapped entrance. Work parties dragged lumber, stones and parts for siege engines and towers. Archers trotted from place to place to lay down covering fire as the great baskets of soil were moved closer to the walls, and smoke and stinking fumes from the heated pitch that was being used for fire arrows and missiles drifted across the whole scene. It looked like the way the Christians described Hades, I thought gloomily.

  Myrddin took it in interestedly. “I’d appreciate a diversion later today, just before sundown, on that side of the walls,” he said pointing to the southwestern corner of the ramparts, where a steep slope had been cleared of trees. “Keep it up until the dusk falls, if you would.” I nodded. I had expected he’d have a plan, but I was not going to question him. He could probably fly over the walls if he wanted, he was a powerful sorcerer. I touched the iron of my sword hilt for luck. Then I simply gave the orders and waited for sundown. Later, I saw Guinevia speak with the wizard, saw him pat her shoulder and stride off towards the eastern slope. I assumed he had found a way into the fortress, and when I caught a glimpse of a white rat casually slipping under the side of a tent, I knew he probably had…

  The siege continued the next morning with plenty of activity from both sides, but by dusk, the defenders were noticeably quieter. I ordered extra guards during the night, suspecting a sally while we slept, but the dawn arrived without any surprise, except that matters were unusually calm. Our ballistae continued to pound the gates, which were showing signs of splintering but little else, but our archers had no targets along the walls, and a puzzled, grizzled centurion came to me. “Summat’s up, boss,” he said. “There’s nobbut one or two on’t walls. That’s not right.” I looked up again. He’d voiced what I had half-noticed, but had been too busy with the artillery to consider. I was puzzling over the possibilities when a shout from the nearest ballista crew caught my attention. Someone had opened the small wicket that was set in the heavy oak gates.

  Intuition seized me. “Stop firing, stop!” I yelled in my biggest parade ground voice. I knew who I would see before the tall dark figure stepped out. It was Myrddin. “Go!” I shouted, gesturing ‘forward’ to the dozen or so soldiers around me. We sprinted across the rubble on the ramp in front of the gates, arriving to find the wizard calm and composed, wiping his hands on a piece of linen.

  “Go inside,” he gestured in a lordly manner. “It’s all yours now. Just don’t drink the water.”

  Within the hour, we had the whole citadel occupied. The streets were littered with dead and dying men, wax-faced and with foam on their startlingly-blue lips. A few wretches were doubled in agony, most were dead, a score or two were still alive but too weakened to fight.

  “Poisoned,” Guinevia said with a satisfaction I had never seen in her before. “Poisoned, every treacherous, traitorous man.” I never questioned Myrddin, never asked how he had done it, but the memory of those gasping, dying men haunted me for years.

  Over the next few days, we stacked the dead outside, interlayered with the timbers that had been our siege engine platforms and wooden walls and made them into a number of huge funeral pyres. I didn’t think to bury the dead, as they seemed tainted, something the earth itself would reject, so I ordered them burned. Nor did I ever want to know how Myrddin had entered the citadel. He may have spirited himself inside invisible, he may have flown over the walls on a hawk’s wings. It was a magician’s business, not mine.

  Equally, I never asked what he had used to poison the garrison’s water supplies, but I have always had my suspicions. Privately I shuddered at the thought of those men, traitors or not, going through such a filthy death. I was not going to berate a powerful sorcerer, not ever, but this was not the way a warrior kills his enemies, I felt.

  Today, I am not so sure. In war, things can change. You kill them with a spear, a sword, an arrow, and some may perhaps use a poison. I knew my own choice and what I would use, but I did not question that killing them had saved many of the lives under my command. Once again, I hardened my heart. Anyway, at that time I had no use for philosophy. I had to consider my next moves in the campaign. The snow would be coming, but I still had enough time to roll up the insurgents and bring those rebel chieftains to heel. And I did. I led my legions northeast, along the cordon of the old Roman forts that had been the exact line of march followed on our last punitive expedition years before.

  Once again, we took hundreds of prisoners as slaves, and we liberated several hundred unfortunates who had been taken as captives by the Picts in their raids into Britain. These I sent back with a token guard, also herding back to the border country the sheep and cattle that had been stolen over the years. We devastated the Picts’ settlements, burned their crops and left dozens of them on crucifixes at the wayside. It was my reminder to the miscreants when they emerged from their hiding places in the heather that the law of Arthur, their emperor, was to be obeyed.

  XXX Skegga

  Allectus slipped into Saxon-held Colchester disguised as a food pedlar. He was leading two pack mules loaded with wheels of cheese and strings of smoked sausage, portions of which provided the bribes to get him past the gate guards and to the commandeered library that served as accommodation for their warlord, Skegga, who was seated, prising with his seax knife at the semi-precious stones that adorned the cover of an ecclesiastical
book.

  “I have come to speak of matters more important than sausage and cheese,” Allectus said directly, causing the Saxon to look up in surprise. “I bring this for you, lord, with knowledge of where there is much, much more.” Allectus placed a soft leather pouch on the table and tipped out an assortment of gold coins and small ingots, scattering them across the surface where some rolled against a painted iron-and-leather helmet.

  “You have my attention.” The voice was a rumble in keeping with Skegga’s appearance. He was a broad-chested, bearded man dressed in trews and a fur tunic, his arms bare, tattooed, and sporting a dozen circlets of gilt and bronze. His fingers were thick with battle rings made from the weapons of defeated enemies, and Allectus noted that two digits on the man’s left hand were missing.

  “I am Allectus, and I was Arthur’s tribune and treasurer until he tried to cheat his people,” he said. “I operated the mint in this town and another in Londinium and I can lead you to hidden riches.”

  Skegga stirred and slid his seax into its white sheath on his hip. Allectus understood the gesture, and bowed. “What is your price for these revelations?” the big Saxon asked.

  “I have more than just gold to offer you, lord,” said Allectus smoothly. “I have knowledge of Arthur, his dispositions, his weaknesses, his battle tactics. I can help you trap and defeat him.”

  Skegga stared at the traitor, assessing his smooth sleekness, his serpent-like head and the oiled hair with its long ponytail. The Saxon recognized the man’s innate confidence and electric energy even as he felt contempt for his treachery. A devious one, and dangerous, he decided. But, if the gods choose to send him gold and information of his enemies, so be it. “Tell me,” he commanded. And Allectus did.