by Anne Perry
Ardesir’s hand tightened on Tathea’s arm. He did not know he was doing it, but his fingers bit into her flesh. She did not care. She felt the same bitter understanding rising inside her.
“Since the beginning the barbarian has waited!” Cassiodorus thundered on. “Now is his hour. Unless we stand against him, stand against wave after wave, use every weapon we have, to the last man, then he will sweep over us and conquer the world.” His face shone; the evening light on it made it seem like a mask of gold. “Make no mistake ... it is the world we fight for! This is the great and final war—good against evil—light against darkness—the forces of civilisation against the tide of their barbarism! If we lose, then there is nothing left. It is the end of humanity! We must win whatever the price. We must exterminate them!” Again he raised his arms high. “Survival!”
The cry went up over and over again around the massed men—“Survival! Survival!”—like the breaking of a great sea against cliffs. Staring over the forest of arms Tathea saw Cassiodorus’ shining face, the taste of victory already on his thick, curved lips.
“It’s so nearly the truth,” Ardesir said bitterly.
“The best lies are,” Tathea replied. “Asmodeus’ plan begins as only a slight twisting of God’s, but by the time you have followed it to the end, it is hideously different, the negation of everything that has value.”
They turned together and walked in silence back towards their own part of the camp, the enormity of what lay before them dwarfing words.
It was two days before Tathea had the opportunity to take even the smallest measure against what Cassiodorus had said. She and Ardesir had discussed it, and made what plans were possible. They separated, to be more effective. She was helping the women who cooked for the soldiers, lugging heavy cauldrons of stewed meat and vegetables, ladling it on to dishes and passing it around. By the end of the evening her back and arms were exhausted, and she was glad to sit down on the grass out of the cold wind and eat bread and a little stew herself.
“You have a man here, husband perhaps?” a voice said out of the shadows.
She looked up and saw a centurion just beyond the firelight, the flames’ reflection dancing on the studs in his armour and catching the red of his cloak.
“No. But it’s the cause of all of us,” she answered. “Where else would I be?” She ate the last of the stew and put the bowl down.
He came closer to the fire and she saw his face. It was blunt, wind-burned, an old sword scar down one cheek. He looked closer to fifty than forty.
“Have you fought the barbarian before?” she asked.
“Not like this,” he replied, squatting down and warming himself. “Just a few bands of them, here and there.” He frowned, the firelight showing the pale skin of his scar, puckered a little, and the curve of his mouth.
“Were they so terrible?” she asked, seeking an opening to begin what she needed to say to as many as she could.
He shrugged. “Seemed ordinary enough then. But things have changed.” He smiled at her, showing a chipped tooth. “Don’t be afraid. We’ll win. We have the discipline, and that counts for everything in the army. We won’t break, or run, no matter what they do. Just stick towards the back, and you’ll be fine.”
“I’m not afraid of being killed,” she said quietly.
“Then what?” He looked at her with compassion. “Tortured? We’ll never allow that to happen. Don’t let yourself think about it.”
How could she tell him the real fear that lay behind everything? “If the barbarians have no hopes or dreams, no morality that tells them certain things are wrong,” she began tentatively, “and we behave the same way as they do, in order to beat them, then they are dead, and we have taken their place.”
He did not understand. “We’ve no choice,” he reasoned, gently, remembering she was a woman. Perhaps he had a wife, or daughter of his own. “You heard what Cassiodorus said, didn’t you? This is the final war ... for survival! Don’t you believe that?”
She tried again. “If we use the barbarians’ weapons and morality to defeat them, in what way will we be different from them?” She leaned forward and put another piece of wood on the fire.
He was puzzled.
“We will have become the new barbarians, without dreams or ideals either,” she said, watching him.
He shivered in spite of the fire roaring up again and catching the new wood. “You don’t change that quickly ...” he said, but there was no conviction in his voice.
“Yes, you do,” she answered. “One act of brutality and you are not what you were even moments before. It’s not long before you can’t go back. If you slaughter a barbarian village, women and children, when they were no threat to you, how will you look at your own family when you return home? How will you tell your children that they must not retaliate with violence if they are cheated or robbed of something, or someone angers them?”
“Who are you?” he asked, his voice sharp with a new confusion. “Why do you say these things?”
“Are they not true?” she countered, staring at him across the firelight.
“We’re fighting for our survival!” he tried again to explain.
“Are we?” She broke the last of the bread and offered him half. “If we behave no differently from the barbarians, then the only thing whose survival is certain is barbarism itself. Maybe they had dreams, and a code of honour once ... maybe they still do, it’s just different from ours.”
The centurion took the bread, his eyes steady, his fingers touching hers in an ancient gesture of unity, as if the sharing of food were a bond between them. She smiled at him, and ate, knowing they did not understand each other.
Through the next weeks as they pressed northwards and the weather grew colder, both she and Ardesir had more such conversations with other soldiers. Many did not get as far. It was uncomfortable for them to think of the enemy as just like themselves. It made the act of killing too personal, something for which one took a different kind of responsibility.
Others were disturbed, able to acknowledge that one’s humanity was defined by one’s own acts, not by the threat or the failings of another.
“We are making a difference,” Ardesir said one night as they sat in the dark beside the fire, huddled in blankets, surrounded by the myriad sounds and movements of the camp. Within a thousand yards in all directions, a city of men slept or lay awake, lost in their own thoughts and loneliness. There had been no battle yet, only the fear of it, and the certainty.
Tathea did not answer. She was not sure enough, but she smiled at him. They both needed to hope, and perhaps there was cause.
The morning was sharp and brilliant. The dawn shadows fled across the snow and the bare trees were black fretwork crusted in glistening ice, the pines a hidden, scented gloom under a canopy. The whole earth seemed jewelled overnight and the fire of the rising sun blushed amber and peach on the distant peaks.
The order to break camp was late. Tathea and Ardesir walked a short way into the forest for fallen wood to build a fire and cook grain into flat cakes to carry with them. The next place might not afford the same forest to glean from.
They heard a thump and slither as they climbed up rising ground, and stopped short.
“Snow melting?” Ardesir asked in a whisper.
“No.” Tathea shook her head. “It’s far too cold for anything to thaw.”
“What? Soldiers?”
She said nothing, but moved forward, treading silently and keeping within shelter of the trunks of pines. The slope opened up ahead of her and she saw what she first thought were two soldiers rolling in the deep snow. Then, as one reared upright and shook, she realised with a bubble of laughter that they were bear cubs. She held up her hand and Ardesir stopped beside her, pleasure lighting his face and his body easing from the tension. He let his sword arm fall.
The first cub took another hefty swipe at the second, and the two of them slithered and tumbled down the slope, squealing with what might h
ave been fury, or equally well sheer delight at the joy of being alive.
For minutes Tathea and Ardesir stood side by side watching the cubs play, then a movement at the further edge of trees caught Ardesir’s eye and he froze.
Tathea saw it with horror: three soldiers armed with bows and arrows.
The cubs heard no noise, no scent even in the still air. They went on playing, oblivious of steel-tipped death yards away. One of them cuffed the other, turned tail to run, and stumbled over his own feet and somersaulted, shaking his head.
The soldiers shouted with laughter and applauded them.
“Thank God!” Ardesir breathed fervently, and Tathea added the same, frightened that it meant so much. A minute’s innocence shared was a light in darkness within. She waved at the soldiers and called out a greeting.
They waved back, and they all watched the bears scamper off into the forest, then they turned, each to look for their own wood for fires. Even dry oat cakes and melted snow would have flavour today.
The first sight of the barbarians came in a sudden swooping attack by eight hundred mounted men riding hard, harrying the outer columns. They fought with bows and metal-tipped arrows, which they fired standing in their stirrups. Within the space of ten minutes nearly two hundred Camassian soldiers fell.
There was chaos as men stumbled over the injured and dying, attempting to save themselves, or to help others. It was not possible to tell if any of the barbarians were even wounded, much less killed.
It was the first time many of the men had seen the reality of battle, and the pain and confusion in the growing darkness was terrible beyond anything they had dreamed. There were no brave words heard now, no pride or boasting, only the agonised horror at the fragility of life and the obscenity of what can be done to living flesh.
It was a wretched night, cold and moonless, with an edge of ice to the wind. Tathea spent all of it moving from one group of injured men to another, trying to do for them what little she could. Many of them would die long before they reached any Camassian outpost with warmth, food or help. She could see in their faces that they knew it as well as she did, and lies were of no comfort.
Those who were unhurt were bitter with anger and guilt that they had made no retaliation, and swore they would never be caught again. In future scouts and outriders would be better prepared.
And so they were—but even with warning, many were killed by barbarian arrows. It was the third attack before any rear success was tasted, and that was obtained by laying a trap and closing it with well-shielded men in the heaviest armour. By the end of that encounter thirty-two Camassians were dead or wounded, but over twenty barbarians were lying on the ground, and another thirty-four captured. All of them were put to the sword and their bodies left for carrion.
“They killed them all!” Ardesir said desperately, as again he stood by the fire, shivering, holding a blanket around his shoulders. “Ordinary soldiers did it, men we’ve marched with, eaten beside!”
Tathea was more used to the exigencies of war. The smell of blood, the feel of blisters on her feet, aching muscles, the constant sounds of pain and the knowledge of helplessness brought it back as if it had been five weeks ago, not five centuries.
“We need the bandages and ointment for our own men,” she said, staring into the yellow flames. “They wouldn’t have lived anyway, not out here. It’s brutal, but perhaps less cruel in the end than leaving men to bleed to death, or freeze.”
Ardesir started to argue, then fell silent.
The encounters with the barbarians continued as the army moved north and east. Sometimes they were merely skirmishes, a few score involved, half a dozen wounded or dead, and the men longed for a big, pitched battle that would crush the invasion and mark a turning of the tide. But they never saw more than two or three hundred barbarians at a time.
The weather was raw this far north. Grey skies were torn ragged by wind from the east, knife-edged and heavy with rain. The land was rough, low-lying marshy stretches divided by belts of pine trees and tangled scrub. There were few hills and they offered little vantage point because of the vegetation. The next valley could hide anything.
The army had been away from the City for almost three gruelling months of marching, sudden attacks and retreats, sleeping hard and cold, eating poorly, when they came upon their first experience of what the barbarian was truly like. It had been a restless night and Tathea slept only fitfully, rolled up in her blanket on one of the few dry spots of ground she could find. She was dimly aware of men coming and going, stepping softly, but it seemed as if they did so with more purpose than the usual anxiety and wakefulness of a camp so near the enemy. It occurred to her that perhaps Cassiodorus had chosen a scouting party from among those recruited from this type of terrain, who would be familiar with its dangers, but it was only an idea, half a dream.
When she finally rose, stiff and shivering, it was broad daylight, and the wind out of the east rustling the pines carried the cold scent of snow from the higher ground.
She looked over towards the centre of the camp and saw Cassiodorus standing at the flap of his tent. His physical presence was an illusion. Like all those who had followed Asmodeus from the beginning, he would never have a body of flesh. He could neither truly live nor die. The tent was not for his comfort, but to mark his leadership, his superiority. Wherever it was set up marked the heart of authority.
He stood broad-shouldered, the pale light catching the sheen of his armour. Even at this distance the confidence in him was like the warmth of a fire. She could see how the soldiers kept glancing at him. He was their one source of knowledge and hope in this nightmare land.
He could not, at this distance, have picked her out from any of the other drab, ordinary women who followed the army, but he was not limited by flesh; his spirit always knew where she was. The arrogance of his pose was a deliberate message to her.
She had only just turned back to her task of packing when she heard the night scouts ride in, not wearily as usual, but with a speed that scattered idlers in their path and made Cassiodorus stride towards them, speaking even before they dismounted to tell their news.
Everyone in the camp was startled. Word spread like flame, and with the same searing pain. They had come on a village half a dozen miles away. Animals prowled the streets and carrion birds settled unafraid on the corpses. The ground was soaked with blood and there was not a man, woman or child alive in the place. Some had been trampled or beaten to death, some slashed with swords, but others were dismembered, brutally, unnecessarily, as if it had given someone pleasure to do it. Women especially were left naked and some even disembowelled. Now the dogs and foxes tore apart what was left of them, dragging limbs and flesh, fighting over the pieces, snarling and wrenching, gulping down what had so recently been warm, beating life.
The men stood around in little groups, horrified into a kind of stupor. Suddenly the atrocity of it was unbearably real. Then as the wave of sickness passed, rage took its place.
Cassiodorus judged his moment to exactness. He spoke with grief and a passion of indignation.
“This is what we fight against!” he cried out hoarsely. “They are not men who do this to harmless villagers, women and children like your own families ... and make no mistake, they are just like your own! They were going peacefully about their lives—working, building, farming the land—and they were slashed to pieces where they cowered, begging for mercy, from creatures who are less than animals. The beasts of the forest kill to eat, as you or I might! These barbarians kill because they take joy in it! They have forfeited their right to be thought of as men!”
He needed to go on no longer. His voice was drowned in a roar of agreement, rough with terror and outrage, shrill in the damp air. Faces were white, bodies shook and hands were clenched tight on sword hilts.
The order was given to march north on the trail of the barbarian, as deep as necessary into his own lands. Revenge must be swift and total.
It was two
nights and three days before the army caught up with them in their own encampment. It was just after sunset in the long twilight of the north when they fell on nearly two thousand of them, including women and children. The slaughter was hideous. Nothing was spared. The men were killed where they stood, the children at their parents’ feet. The old women were butchered with the rest, the young kept alive to serve the soldiers’ pleasure.
A few held back, horrified, but Tathea was helpless to affect the tide of destruction. She knew Ardesir would fare no better, and dared not think of the danger he would draw upon himself by trying, but words were their only weapon.
She stood alone beside the fire after dark, shuddering with cold, wrapping her woollen cloak tightly around her, hearing the wind moaning in the pines. She could not bring herself to offer help to the few wounded, or even to grieve for the dead. Let the legions bury their own.
She heard footsteps, and swung around, hoping to see Ardesir. Then her flesh froze as she looked into the triumphant, sneering face of Cassiodorus. There was a brightness to his skin as if the victory created a kind of glow inside him. He stood with his arms folded across his broad chest, the dark stains of blood splattering his tunic and armour, but no helmet over his close-curled head, and the firelight burnished the gold in his hair.
“Taste my victory, Tathea,” he said very softly. “I told you I would win. How many souls do you think have chosen their path to hell today? A thousand, two thousand, five?”
Suddenly she knew what the scouting party had done three nights ago, as he meant her to. It was there in his eyes, the curl of his lip.
“It wasn’t the barbarians who tore the villagers apart, was it?” Her voice was shaking, her words clumsy on her tongue. “It was our own men! You sent them ... so this would happen!”
His smile broadened, showing his white teeth; his eyes shone. “Of course,” he agreed. “Killing barbarians in battle is pointless. You surely didn’t imagine that is why I came, did you?”
There was no need to answer him. Their understanding was as old as good and evil.
