by Ian Ross
‘They need help down there,’ he said, slinging his shield up from the saddle horn and kicking his horse into a canter. One of his bodyguards cried out, but already he was riding fast with Dexter beside him.
His horse crossed the meadow at a gallop, kicking up turf. After two days on horseback Castus was starting to feel welded to the saddle; the aches in his thighs and back had grown familiar now. The rush of the breeze, the motion of the animal beneath him, was invigorating: he could never have imagined this in his years as an infantry soldier.
Already the knot of warriors was retreating towards the thicket of trees on the far side of the meadow. Not a large wood, but dense and tangled with thorny undergrowth. Once they got in there, Castus knew, they might stand a chance of defending themselves against the cavalry. He could hear Dexter bellowing orders to his men to form up, but already the Stablesiani were banding together into a mounted wedge. Castus threw himself in amongst them, and at once he heard the trumpet sounding the charge.
Jostle of horses; clattering lances. A bow strummed behind him; he heard the insect-whine of the arrow beside his ear, and saw one of the Chamavi struck down. Then a sudden rush, hooves battering the turf, and one side of the shield ring rippled and collapsed as the warriors fell back in confusion. A moment of terror, heart-clenching, bowel-roiling, his whole body exploding in sweat, then Castus was into the mesh of the fight and no thought remained. He felt his horse kick; he saw a raised shield and hacked down at it, knocking it aside. A wheeling backhand blow sliced across the warrior’s face. Blood sprayed.
A spear struck against his leg, jarring against his greave, and Castus raised his foot and booted another shield away from him. Still his horse was moving forward, snorting and biting as she powered her way between the panicking warriors. The defensive ring was broken on the left, but to the right Castus could see the remaining Chamavi regrouping around their leader, falling back once more towards the woods. He was breathing hard and fast, his chest heaving inside the tight cuirass, his thighs locked to the saddle leather as the fight swirled around him. Somebody hurled a javelin up at him, and he ducked his head and felt the shank clang against his helmet. The impact made him sway in the saddle and he pulled sharply on the reins to right himself; his horse blew angrily and reared forwards.
Then suddenly the last of the raiders was down and the fight had moved on, Dexter wheeling his hand in the air and shouting orders to his men to rally. The surviving barbarians were almost at the woods, retreating in close order with their shields up, harried by the horse archers. A moment more, and they were safe between the trees. Castus glanced back along the valley: a score of raiders dead or wounded, and only one horse down, kicking its legs in the air as the rider scrambled clear.
Dexter rode up; one of the scouts followed him. ‘Dominus,’ he said. ‘The thicket’s not too deep, but there’s dense scrub blocking our way in. If we go into it, we’ll be losing men for sure. I’ve sent a cordon around the far side, but it looks like they’re making a stand in there. We could keep them penned up and wait...’
He raised his eyebrows. Castus took his meaning. The longer they were delayed here, the more time there would be for the other raiding bands to make it back to the river and slip across. He looked at the sky, the tops of the trees, judging the direction of the wind.
‘Is this a grove sacred to any local gods, do you know?’ he asked with a wry half-smile.
‘Not as far as I know, dominus,’ Dexter replied, and his face tightened into a grin.
‘Burn it.’
Dexter snapped out the orders to his men, then raised his face to the sky. ‘Whatever spirits may abide in this place,’ he intoned, ‘whether god or goddess, I ask forgiveness, and vow to you a suitable sacrifice!’
‘Do we have a suitable sacrifice?’ Castus asked, frowning.
The cavalry prefect pointed to the few stolen cows that his men had already managed to round up. ‘We need fresh meat anyway!’
*
The flames took quickly in the dry scrub along the edge of the thicket, sending billows of grey smoke back between the trees. Watching the fire crackling through the branches, Castus thought of the story the governor had told him over dinner, about Leontius, his predecessor. Why would anyone burn a sacred grove on purpose? Even foreign and barbaric gods merited respect. But one man with a fire-pot could easily start a blaze in midsummer, as he had just seen.
Already he could hear the shouts of defiance from inside the thicket. Turning his horse, he rode around to the far side, where Dexter was waiting with half of his troopers. The smoke came twining lazily through the trees, carrying the scent of burning.
‘The cattle back there had a brand,’ he said. ‘An M and an R, joined. Do you know it?’
‘Magnius Rufus,’ Dexter told him. ‘He owns half the grazing stock in the province. Treats this country like his own private estate. Most of the shepherds and drovers in these parts are his slaves and coloni.’
‘Wealthy man.’
Dexter blew upwards, rolling his eyes and flicking his fingers against his brow. Castus nodded slowly. He had already guessed who the owner of the cattle must be.
Sparks were drifting between the trees now, smaller fires taking hold deeper inside the wood as the smoke thickened into a dense grey fog. The horses stamped and shied at the smell of it, their riders keeping them on a tight rein. Then a burst of shouting, a crashing of undergrowth, and the first fugitives came staggering out of the smoke.
At once the Stablesiani were falling upon them, cutting down any that offered resistance, holding those who surrendered at spearpoint. Dexter rode down the line of the cordon, shouting orders to kill anyone with weapons in his hands. Castus saw a man burst from the bushes only a hundred paces away, a thickset warrior stripped to the waist, his beard split in a howl of rage as he brandished his spear. For a moment he thought of his old friend Brinno, and of Ganna, and a brief swell of sympathy lifted the blackness of his determination. But then he thought of the dead villagers left in the wreckage of their homes, and his heart hardened. The man only managed a few running strides from the edge of the wood before two arrows struck him in the torso, and he reeled and fell.
Behind him came a knot of other warriors; Castus saw the leader’s blue and white shield flashing through the smoke. ‘Take that one alive!’ he roared, and kicked his horse forward into a canter.
The warriors broke from cover, heads down as they blinked the smoke from their eyes. Already they were surrounded, arrows whipping in from all sides. Castus saw the leader struck in the leg. The two men flanking him raised their shields to protect him, but the troopers closed in fast. For a moment Castus saw only milling horses, the dart and swipe of spears. By the time he reached them the fight was over, the leader lying wounded, cursing through his teeth, his followers slain or kneeling, abject in surrender as the horses circled them.
*
They left the thicket smouldering behind them and rode on north, with their prisoners and the liberated captives, another ten miles along the valley of the Mosa, following the tracks of men and beasts. Towards nightfall, when it grew too dark to see the smoke trails on the flat horizon, they camped beside a ruined settlement of charcoal burners’ huts.
A relief, Castus thought, to be back on his feet once more, to shed helmet and cuirass and stretch his limbs. His whole body felt moulded to the shape of the saddle. He paced the perimeter of the camp, checked the horse lines, then stretched himself on the ground as the men roasted the meat of the sacrificed cow. In the flickering glow of the camp fires he noticed broken walls in the undergrowth, masonry almost obscured by tall weeds and ivy.
‘What was this place?’ he said.
‘A villa, maybe, or a posting station,’ Dexter told him, chewing on the fatty half-raw beef. ‘This whole country was populated, many years ago. But they farmed the land too hard. Wore out the soil. It’s just sandy dirt now, no good for crops, only rough grazing land and wild scrub. It’s worse to the west of h
ere, nearer the coast.’
He sucked his teeth, spat out a lump of gristle, then wiped grease from his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘No, brother, the gods have not been kind to the province of Germania.’
‘Some men still get rich off it,’ Castus said. It was easier to talk like this, in the blue twilight with the shapes of men in the shadows around them. No sense of hierarchy out here.
‘Aye, some men do. Like Magnius Rufus. Maybe half a dozen like him, besides the grain contractors and the slave-dealers. There are still free people in the towns, in Colonia and Tungris, but most of the rest of the province is just landowners and their slaves. And us, the army, keeping them all safe.’
‘They hate the barbarians fiercely enough. Do they feel the threat so badly?’
Dexter grinned, his face in the firelight appearing all hard bones and tight muscle. ‘Everyone here does,’ he said, flinging a gnawed bone onto the fire. ‘Even though they trade with them, use them as labourers, even see them settled in their towns and serving in our army, the people here will always hate and fear the barbarian. They can’t forget what happened forty years ago, when the warbands came swarming over the river and put this whole province to the sack. Most of the rest of Gaul, too. You can still see the ruined buildings from that time.’
Castus glanced back again at the overgrown walls behind him. Sparks rose from the fire and spun briefly in the night sky. He had heard the stories of those days often enough, but had never realised how much the people of the north-west carried the memory of it in their blood.
A figure approached from his left, out of the darkness, and Castus tensed instinctively, reaching for his sword. All this talk of ancient destruction had left him on edge. Dexter made a calming gesture.
‘Flavius Bappo,’ he said, nodding to the man as he joined them beside the fire. ‘Frankish, but he serves with us. He’s our interpreter.’
The newcomer wore military costume and was short-haired and clean-shaven like any Roman soldier. His slightly protuberant eyes and freckled cheeks gave him a toadlike appearance, but he was smiling as he saluted to Castus.
‘Dominus,’ Bappo said in a heavy Germanic accent. ‘I’ve questioned the prisoners we took at the wood. That leader, the one with the arrow in his leg, is an important man. Conda, the son of Ragnachar, who is paramount chief of the Chamavi.’
Dexter grinned in satisfaction. ‘A good day’s hunting!’ he declared. ‘Ragnachar’s other son died in the spring, in the same skirmish that killed Leontius. So Conda’s his successor.’
‘This Ragnachar,’ Castus said. ‘He’s their king?’
‘The Franks have no kings, not really,’ Dexter told him. ‘We call them kings, but they’re elected leaders and their people depose them if they fail in battle. But Ragnachar’s held power over the Chamavi for about a decade now. He’s a strong warrior. And he loves his son, so they say.’
Castus nodded thoughtfully as he lay down, his head pillowed against his saddlebag. An idea was turning in his mind, but fatigue was blurring his thinking. He could hear Dexter talking to the interpreter – another band of raiders had been sighted to the west, out in Toxandria beyond the Mosa, moving north under cover of darkness. But the voices grew fainter, the words uncoupled into a vague drone, and the whirl of his mind stilled. Castus dropped into a dreamless sleep.
*
Dawn brought a world of glowing pearl-grey, the landscape obscured by thick ground-mist that hid all but the fleecy shapes of trees. Dexter had got his men up and in the saddle long before first light, and they had already ridden for two hours, across flat marshy country cut up with streams. Now they heard the first sounds of fighting ahead of them, the bellow of massed voices, the bright clink of steel. The mist dulled the thunder of hooves on the dew-damp grass as the riders broke into a canter.
Castus felt the mist on his face; he drank it down like cool water, a balm to aching limbs and harried mind. Anxiety jumped and writhed inside him: somewhere just ahead was the Rhine, the last barrier the raiders must cross to escape the Roman domain. Soon he would discover whether all he had planned had fallen into place.
Riders on the left, appearing wraithlike from the sunshot mist. A draco banner trailed behind one of them, and Castus threw up his hand.
‘Who are you?’ His shout was a hoarse bark in the damp air. ‘Where are the enemy?’
‘Aurelius Durio, dominus,’ the horseman cried, saluting back as he recognised the commander’s own banner. ‘Biarchus of the Numerus Equitum Sarmatorum. Hundred of them just ahead of us, some on stolen horses.’
‘Tell your commander to hook around to the left,’ Castus called to the man, signalling with a flat palm. ‘Push them towards the river, and don’t let any slip past you.’
The rider saluted again and turned back into the mist. Beyond him, Castus could make out the shapes of other horsemen, lances glinting as the sun caught their tips.
‘Dominus?’ Dexter called, raising himself in the saddle. ‘You hear that?’
Castus reined his horse to a slow pace, then took off his helmet. Sure enough, distinct through the dulled misty air, came a repeated noise. Snap... snap... snap...
‘Ballistae, it must be!’ Dexter cried, grinning wildly. ‘Roman artillery!’
And even as he spoke the mist seemed to roll ahead of them and lift, the open country spreading away to the flat horizon in the morning sun. There was the riverbank – much closer than Castus had imagined – and there, out in midstream, were the unmistakable shapes of Roman warships. Joy punched through him, and he let out a shout of exultation. Castus had known in his heart that the old navarch Senecio would not let him down. Sure enough, there was the Bellona, masts and rigging cleared away and the catapult and ballistae on her deck already in action. Other vessels moved beyond her – the two small galleys that had accompanied Castus from Argentorate, and others too.
The misty riverbank was boiling with men. All the retreating raiders had converged on this point, as Castus had known they must: this was where the canoes that had carried them over the Rhine were beached, ready to take them home. Some of the barbarians had already crossed, while others were pushing out into the stream, each canoe packed with bodies, easy targets for the catapults on the galleys. But now there were Roman troops on the riverbank as well, hundreds of fully armed legionaries coming ashore from barges and hacking down any foe that dared approach. Already most of the remaining canoes had been destroyed, and the raiders were trapped.
Deployed in a broad double line, the horsemen began to canter forward across the last distance of open country. Mist streamed in their wake as they closed with the milling horde. Castus rode on their right flank, his standard whipping behind him. Already many of the barbarians were throwing down their weapons, raising their arms in surrender. The legionaries had formed all along the riverbank now, a wall of shields pressing steadily forward. Some of the raiders, bullied by the screams of the chiefs, tried to stand and fight, but Castus could see that their resistance would be brief and futile. All that remained now was submission, or massacre.
He heard Dexter shouting: ‘At them! They’re breaking!’
Then the trumpets sounded charge, and the moving wall of horsemen let out a single roaring yell as they began to gallop.
CHAPTER VIII
The biarchus of the Numerus Sarmatorum had a smear of drying blood on his face – not his own, Castus guessed – and a ferocious look in his eyes. His bronze scale cuirass glittered in the sun as he rode up to make his report.
‘Dominus! We killed over fifty, took about eighty prisoners and liberated thirty-four of their captives.’
Liberated, Castus thought: an odd term. Most of the people taken by the raiders were probably slaves and tenant farmers, now to be returned to their masters.
‘What about your own losses?’
The biarchus shrugged. ‘Four dead, seven wounded, dominus!’
Castus dismissed him with a nod. Messengers from the other units were bringing their
own tallies: the captives must surely number over two hundred. The slain, a great many more. Nobody so far could estimate how many barbarians had slipped away across the river.
‘Dominus!’ said the centurion commanding the detachment of the Thirtieth Legion. ‘We took twenty-eight prisoner and killed around the same. Only minor wounds on our side. Navarch Senecio reports a large mass of Franks gathered on the far bank. About a thousand, he says, women and children among them.’
They must have been waiting to greet their menfolk on their return from the raids. They would be getting a different sort of greeting soon enough. Castus commended the centurion: he had not expected much from the garrison troops of the Thirtieth that had come down the river by barge. They had been a show of force, but that was all that had been required.
Now that the fighting was done, Castus’s mood of elation had shifted to a chilled sobriety. He was used to feeling shaken after a fight, sickened even, all the dread suppressed by action now climbing through his body, making his guts heave and his hands tremble. But he had never felt this sense of cold dislocation before, this terrible emptiness.
Beneath him his horse still sweated and trembled after the charge through the mist. Little mist remained now; the meadows along the riverbank steamed. Bodies lay scattered on the turf, the blood looking very bright in the morning sun. Further from the river, the scene resembled a livestock market as the soldiers rounded up stolen cattle and sheep, pigs and even chickens. A slave market too: the surviving Franks were herded together in pens of spearmen, stripped of their weapons, their belts and boots, in many cases even the clothes on their backs. Heaps of seized weapons and plunder lay on the grass. Castus watched dispassionately. He felt only an oily sense of nausea, a vague shame at what he had directed.
