With the boom cutting off any retreat, the invaders would be sailing into a second obstacle I would have fixed across the narrowest part of the U-bend, where the river turned north. This would be a double barrier, prepared ahead of time and reinforced with a pontoon bridge on which I would station artillery and fire archers. I would also deploy ballistae on each bank, where the river narrowed, to plunge flaming pitch and large rocks into the invading fleet.
As a further measure, I would have fire ships stationed at each end of the trap. Whichever way the wind was blowing that day, I could send in blazing vessels to entangle themselves with the invading armada. With luck, we should sink or burn most of the enemy before they could come to land. For those that did get ashore, I would have cavalry and infantry waiting. I only hoped I had sufficient forces for the task, for our regular cavalry had been sadly depleted by the Saxons, and our heavy cavalry was not numerous. As my barge pulled steadily back through the biting wind to Londinium, I pulled my cloak tighter around me, and shivered. If my naval trap failed, the chances were that I would lose Britain to Maximian. I was unconcerned about dying in battle, but quailed at the thought of my Guinevia enslaved, of my son Milo likely executed, of wasting what my soldiers and I had fought for to bring Britain from under the Roman heel. All of that made a shudder run through my bones. The Romans were coming, and I was gambling again that I could somehow stop them. I needed the gods to send me an ally.
XXXIII Frozen
February was the darkest, coldest month and all of Britain shivered in its icy grip. The land was frozen hard, little moved on its icy, rutted surface except the occasional hare or fox, which would limp, trembling through the frozen grass. The few cattle that had not been slaughtered and salted before the worst onset of winter were kept inside the cottagers’ homes, sharing the shelter and providing a farmyard warmth of their own. I was concerned about our cavalry horses, which we had again moved north from Aquae Sulis and a growing Saxon threat, to the safety of the great castrum at Caerleon. They and our fleet, which was safely wintering at Portus Chester, were my two greatest military assets. The fleet was stronger than the less-experienced Roman fleet, and the big horses of the heavy cavalry were our unsuspected weapon that should break any Saxon shield wall. I had ordered them housed in good stabling, and an ingenious engineer officer had not only commandeered a small dome-roofed temple, appropriately enough of Epona the horse goddess, that adjoined a public bath, but had piped in steam heat from the bath’s own system to keep our precious steeds in winter comfort.
Our soldiers were less well served and less impressive than the horses. They were reasonably trained and equipped, but sadly outnumbered by the two Saxon hordes that had seized swathes of territory in the east and south. If ever those half-rival groups of invaders linked forces, we would be crushed.
Looming ominously on the horizon was the menace of a Roman invasion, which made the Saxon threat pallid and feeble by comparison. I truly did not know what to do, and called on Guinevia’s magical viewing to help me. I needed that, and I could well use her tutor and mentor’s advice, so she had successfully persuaded Myrddin to come to Chester from his freezing stone home in the Welsh mountains, tempting him with talk of warm rooms, a soft bed, good food and talk of mysticism.
On this day when the wind blasted in from the Hibernian Sea and even the sheltered harbour beneath Chester’s fortress walls was choppy with wavelets, I asked the two sorcerers to join me and my senior officers to discuss a campaign. I explained my problem succinctly. “I cannot wait for the spring, when two Saxon armies and a Roman one will come for me,” I said. “With miracles, we might defeat one of them, but we could not take on three armies, even one after the other. What I propose instead is to begin a winter campaign and catch the Saxons off their guard.”
The idea was outlandish, but it had merit while it also came with great danger. Men did not want to fight in winter, it was a time when they stayed by the fireside. Winter was not a campaigning season, not a time for slogging through snowdrifts, for sleeping outdoors in constantly-wet clothing, shivering under scraps of canvas. There was no food to be had in the countryside, the heavy equipment and impedimenta carts were more difficult to move through slush, or ice and frozen ruts, and breakdowns were much more frequent.
If we could even raise an army, the men would need more sustenance to keep their bodies active in the cold, which meant supply problems, clothing and equipment difficulties. There would be hardships in even simple things like gathering fuel for the vital warming and cooking fires, in communicating with remote detachments, with secrecy of movements that could in winter be tracked by smoke from the vital fires we would need. There would be a host more problems, too.
But we could surprise the Saxons if we went now, unexpected in a difficult time, and surprise was a vital element of military success. It was incumbent on me to plot how to do it. The question was could we campaign across the frozen land? I fell back on my usual military dicta - start with the basics: define the objective, gather intelligence, assign personnel, establish communications, source supplies and arrange transport. The well-used military machinery fell into place for most of these categories, but this time, I had a secret weapon: gathering information. My unusually-compliant seers were skilled at sending out their minds to view remote places and people, they had agreed to help, I explained what I wanted, and hoped for results.
Guinevia and Myrddin both nodded, exchanged glances and went to their chambers with scribes who recorded their visions to read to me later. The seers sent out their mystic inner eyes and described a sprawling Saxon tent camp around Colchester, its herd of stolen cattle and sheep penned in a loop of the river there, rows of beached longships and a very large area of destruction where fire had burned the town and taken away much of the very winter quarters’ habitation that the Saxons had sought in the place.
Across the southern stretch of Britain, the sorcerers also viewed the other Saxon force’s encampment. They had chosen a sheltered spot in a steep-sided valley and were camped alongside a small stream that meandered towards Aquae Sulis. Their war band was less numerous than the Saxons’ force camped by Colchester, and seemed more passive, for neither seer reported much movement. Those invaders, it seemed were content to wait out the winter in their tents and rough shelters.
Guinevia planted the seed of the idea in my mind, Myrddin confirmed what she and he both had seen.
“Can I do this and live?” I asked Myrddin. Then I told him my half-formed plan. He and Guinevia exchanged that glance I had seen before, and they nodded in unison. I noticed without surprise that a white Rat was preening its whiskers in a dark corner of the room. I glanced up over Guinevia’s head but there was no vapour cloud, and Myrddin was his usual saturnine and unreadable self. Positive. I saluted them both, kissed Guinevia in gratitude and left, to outline the plan to our war council.
It was dissected, discussed and agreed. The tribunes Cragus and Androcles would accompany me, and we would take a picked force including the elite Chevron warriors who proudly sported badges from the cloak of the officer who had saved our iconic Eagle standard. Three days later, my dragoons mounted on our heavy horses and with my fine black Frisian steed Corvus under me, our war band of six dozen men set out for Colchester, across quiet, frozen Britain. We carried the Eagle that had helped us recapture Britain, and now it also displayed a dragon symbol to show its freedom from Rome.
I wore my cavalryman’s helmet with the eagle crest, my purple cloak of Imperator, pinned at the shoulder with the silver and amber badge of a British jarl, and I wore my great sword Exalter at my hip, to show those we might see that this was no raiding party, but their lord riding out. It was a heartening message that would resonate through the markets, hamlets and towns to say that, even in the depths of winter, Britannicus is striking at our enemies. The people will know: he will rid us of the Saxon menace, he will keep the Romans at bay.
We rode across the snow-quiet limestone peaks of central Brita
in, through a stark, vast oak forest and into the lonely fenlands, which crackled frosty and white under our horses’ hooves. Our helmet plumes were matched by the plumes of the breath of horses and men; we travelled light, we made good time and we rode unchallenged across the land of the Catuvellauni. At the north-south metalled high road of Ermine Street, we turned south, to collect certain supplies from the British garrison that still held snowy Verulamium. I was interested to note there that the Christians, who were now unmolested, were building a temple to one of their holy men, Alban, a rebel who had been beheaded at Severus’ orders. A criminal to some, I mused, and a saint to others.
After a day to regroup and resupply, we moved on, and it was after dusk on the moonless night we wanted when we came near the Saxon encampment outside Colchester. We ourselves were no fragrant flowers, but from several miles’ distance we first scented the smoke, and then their gagging stench of human grease, ripe-sweated, rank wool and dung. We approached the camp as we had planned, in darkness and from the side where the animals were herded in a loop of the Colne river. As I had hoped and prayed to Mithras, the water’s surface was thick, hard-frozen ice.
We did not pause. A dozen of our soldiers slipped across undetected and cut the throats of the few sentries, who were all dozing or huddled unmoving in their cloaks. Cragus showed a light, hidden behind his cloak from the enemy, to report the sentries silenced, and I brought our column over the river, our horses’ hooves wrapped in sacking to muffle them and to give them purchase on the rutted ice. At my orders, the cavalrymen had smothered their beasts’ nostrils and whispered comfortingly to quiet them. It worked. Animals and riders moved stealthily, straight into the undisturbed herd, and one detail of six bold soldiers crept through the shadows to a warehouse where grain was stored, and fired it. That was our signal to start.
It was easy work to move the drowsy cattle, but edging out the flock of sheep proved more difficult, and we had only about half of them across the river when a Saxon who’d stepped out for a midnight piss saw the movement. He ran to the pen, and was ridden down by one of our cavalrymen. From then on, it was a rearguard action. We rode our big horses at the sleepy, alarmed Saxons, many of whom were drunk and stumbling, anyway. We threw flasks of oil into their watch fires to make them explode and flare alarmingly, and we scattered burning brands among the tents. My raiders created a noisy chaos of steel, smoke and blood that panicked the lean cattle to a loping stampede and confused the Saxons into shouting disarray.
We lost some cows who fell through weak spots in the river ice, which at least had the benefit of creating open water to delay any would-be pursuers, and many of the sheep and goats scattered nimbly into the forests along the river, but the damage was done to the Saxons and we had no use for the animals ourselves. The locals would catch and hide away the beasts, and that was good. The Saxons had scoured the region, scraping it clear of food and brought their loot to their camp. Our raiders had destroyed their store, and there was no more. Now, in the depths of winter, they were not only sleeping roofless outside the destroyed houses of Colchester, but they were virtually out of supplies.
Our task accomplished, we slid away into the night like goblins, but we laughed a lot more than those night-walkers do.
Within two weeks, the Saxon longships began leaving, their crews starving and desperate. Some went to Gaul, some scattered around the coast of Britain, but their gathered force was dispersed and no longer a threat. It would be months before the Saxon warlord Skegga could again pull together a force to match ours. They were not defeated, but they had been driven off, for now.
We stayed for a few nights in Verulamium, tending our horses and ourselves, and we feasted on the quarters of sheep that Androcles had somehow butchered and brought back across his saddle bow. Then we set off for Aquae Sulis and the camp the sorcerers had described. This would be a different form of attack and we made it with the utmost caution. We found the encampment, and traced back upstream the brook that ran through it. I had no intention of facing those Saxons with my puny force, but I intended to discomfit them, at least.
Several miles upstream, we found a smallholding that had been gutted, but it had what I needed, an old byre and pigsty, and some timbers. We made several sleds that our horses could drag, and we loaded them with reeking dung from the byre. This we pulled to within a half mile of the Saxon camp, and dumped the lot into the brook. For good measure, we dropped our breeches and added some human waste to the foul mix. The Saxons, ever careless of hygiene, were drinking from that convenient stream next to their tents, and we gave them some additional nutrition. My spies reported a few days later that there were many raiders vomiting and sick in their camp, and later, we learned that scores had died. By then, we were back in Chester, by our firesides and taking the chill out of our bones. For now at least, the Saxon threat had been nullified.
XXXIV Prepare
Maximian was ready. Frozen February had given way to blustering March and his winter of preparations was ending. He wished to take his invasion force to Britain as soon as possible, he told his officers, because you could not trust the Alemanni to stay quiet for long. There were signs of more unrest, and King Gennobaudes, he had found, was liaising with the Britons. Maximian had brought the Belge before him, tortured him into confession and confiscated the royal treasury.
Then, to entertain his troops, he had the battered monarch sewn into the bloodied hide of a mule and turned loose in the arena at Rouen with a couple of starving wolves. The spectacle had delighted the troops, who were bored after months in winter quarters. Maximian drawled to his officers that watching a tenant king torn to pieces by a couple of his fellow dogs had inspired considerable loyalty among the other vassals. Amazing, he said, what a turn of speed that fellow had shown, despite being wrapped so tightly. At first, that was.
The Augustus Emperor of the West turned his mind from the bloody spectacle in the arena, straightened his purple-trimmed tunic and considered his preparations to retake the mutinous colony. He would divide his forces into three parts, like Gaius Caesar’s Gaul. The main thrust would be over the shortest crossing of the Narrow Sea, from Itius, the temporary departure port east of Bononia. From its beaches, he’d launch his invasion barges. About the same time, he would send a diversionary attack from the Scheldt, directly west into the Thames estuary and straight for the heart of Londinium. Those squadrons should draw off the British fleet to allow the main thrust an unopposed crossing of the strait. Once the Romans were ashore near Dover, they could march overland and join the attack on Londinium in a couple of days.
But the attack that would crush the Britons would come from an unexpected direction. Maximian had secretly been gathering a second fleet, further west along the coast of Gaul. This troop-carrying armada would sail at the same time as the Scheldt flotilla, round the western peninsula that formed the land’s end of Britain and follow along the north coast of the Dumnonian peninsula and into the estuary of the Severn river. This tidal inlet could be followed all the way to the old legionary garrison at Gloucester, bypassing the Caerleon strongpoint along the way. From Gloucester, the disembarked troops would march overland along the valley of the Thames. They would strike unexpected from the west and join the other two invasion groups near Londinium, to trap and crush the usurper Arthur once and for all.
With the Britons defeated and in chains, the Romans could then turn their attention to the squatter Saxons in eastern Britain. They could, Maximian mused, be left in place as a buffer against further barbarian incomers. Much would depend on their willingness to pay tribute and become vassals, he thought. If not, he would simply put them to the sword as well, or there was always Rome’s ever-growing appetite for slaves. But, there would be time enough for those terms to be hammered out when he had Arthur’s head on a spear point over a city gateway.
He sent out his orders by courier. The twin flotillas from the Belgic Scheldt and from western Gaul’s rocky harbours were to begin their voyages in 12 days’ time.
Two days later, the invasion barges would leave for their shorter journey from the coast near Bononia. Both should arrive on Britain’s shores at the same time.
The activity in the shipyards along the Meuse and Scheldt was observed by Arthur’s spies, and several boats slipped hurriedly out of their ports on unscheduled fishing trips that would bring them spy payments of gold. Word reached Arthur before the first invaders had boarded their vessels. He did not receive any notice of the Gallic fleet’s preparations.
When the Gauls came to tell me, I rewarded them well, and thanked Mithras that I had begun my preparations. The giant log booms that would close the Thames were already prepared, stoutly chained together and fastened to the northern shore, where we had also built low-lying strongpoints to defend them. I went to Londinium once again, to supervise and to rally my soldiers, and once again, I began moving the pieces around the chessboard. I left orders for the legion in Eboracum to move south to Verulamium, to be ready as a swift response force for any threat to the east coast, or as support for our operations along the Thames.
Equally, I shunted the legion at Chester down the length of Watling Street to Londinium, and brought a sizeable force from Caerleon in the far west to the southern coast in case of an attack on our naval facilities at Portus Chester, where Grimr had his fleet on high alert. He also sent scouts to patrol the Narrow Sea from Dorchester to the deadly sandbanks east of Dover.
Guinevia followed me to Londinium because I needed her psychic spying eyes, but she could not have stayed with me on that wild ride that caused two horses to founder under me, so hard ridden were they. My guards and I clattered into Londinium through the New Gate, and I went at once to the riverfront command post by the Sher Bourne. What my officers told me caused me to change horses again and wearily carry on 25 or so miles east to the first of the log boom emplacements.
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