A Year of Ravens: a novel of Boudica's Rebellion

by E. Knight

  The man lay on the ground, his blood coursing out onto the black grass as he wailed piteously, transformed in a moment from howling enemy to desperate victim. Agricola's first victim, there at his feet: the pain-racked body of the first man he had killed. The glory of battle, the honor of combat laid bare. No epic spoke of the stink of shit as the man's bowels went, the mewling and begging for life . . .

  Agricola went to put him out of his misery, but another man came at him, cursing him in his barbarian tongue, sword raised and ready to strike.

  Agricola kicked him hard in the balls, and he doubled over, clutching himself, his curses now strangled gasps. Agricola cut them short, smashing his sword blade into the tribesman’s skull; dark lumps of hair, brain, and skull that he was grateful he could clearly not see spewed skyward as he made to strike again, but the enemy was already dead. He realized in that moment that killing the second man weighed on him far less than the first.

  “Sir! Look out!” Agricola heard Felix’s shrill voice as the lad ran toward him; he turned too late as a barbarian warrior slammed into his side, taking him to the ground. They rolled, fighting furiously on the blood-sodden earth, growling like beasts. Then, the ground beneath them vanished, and they rolled over the side of the rampart and tumbled into the ditch below. Agricola crashed onto his back, the breath driven from his body. He could feel his lungs trying to work and his throat trying to scream, but there was nothing in him. Then the barbarian was atop him, iron-hard fingers clamping around his neck. The man’s teeth were gritted, his eyes white and huge in the dark. Above him, Agricola could hear the sound of battle, the clash of sword on sword, the bass thudding of iron on shield, the panicked shouts of men about to die and the triumphant yells of those who had bested them.

  Agricola tried to fight back, but he had no strength left. Panic took him then, a desperate fear and the need to live. “Please,” he gurgled. “Please . . .”

  The barbarian must have understood because he laughed and squeezed harder. Agricola tried to claw at the man’s face, but his attacker simply craned his neck back out of reach and left him flailing in the dark. White spots began to dance in front of his eyes, and then his vision tunneled into blackness, and he felt the cold hand of Hades tugging at his soul. As he gave up the ghost, he felt the barbarian’s grip slacken and the heavy weight of him fall across his body.

  And he heard Roscius. Calling for help.

  “He’s alive.”

  “Thank fuck for that.”

  “Come on, sir, come on . . .”

  Agricola opened his eyes to see Felix looming above him. The young legionary helped him to a sitting position, and it seemed to Agricola that he had awoken in Tartarus. The bodies of dead men surrounded him—mostly barbarian, but here and there were the red tunics of dead Romans.

  “You all right, sir?” Naso looked down at him, weasel face drawn and pale.

  “I think so,” Agricola croaked, rubbing his throat. “What happened?”

  “Young Felix here saved your arse.” Naso glanced at the boy with something like approval in his beady eyes. “In contravention to orders to form up, but I’ve decided not to put him on a charge.”

  “Good. Thank you, Felix.”

  “Just doing my duty, sir,” Felix replied, looking as though he was going burst with pride.

  “All right, piss off,” Naso told him. “Go and help your mates setting up a pyre for those we lost.”

  Felix rose, saluted, and did as he was ordered. “How many did we lose?” Agricola asked Naso.

  “Twenty-two dead.”

  “Wounded?” Agricola got gingerly to his feet. Every part of him hurt.

  “None serious.”

  “None? That’s lucky.”

  “Not for some.” Naso spat in the grass, still dark with drying blood. “The Cambrians took some of ’em. If I was those poor bastards, I’d rather have a foot of iron in my guts. No telling what the woad-skins will do to them—but asking for a ransom won’t be on the list.”

  “Shit.” Agricola shook his head, not wanting to imagine the fate of the unfortunates who had become prisoners and soon-to-be burned offerings to the Druidic gods. “We need to get out of here, then. We can’t risk going after them, can we?” He shouldn't have framed it like a question, not talking to an optio, but he couldn't help it.

  “I wouldn’t,” Naso offered. “No telling how many more of them could be out there.”

  Agricola nodded. “And they could be back, so we’ll need to move fast. Forced pace. Where’s Calvus? As soon as burial detail . . .”

  “Calvus is there, sir.” Naso jerked his head toward a headless corpse in the dirt.

  “Roscius?”

  “They took him, sir. I’m sorry; I know he was your mate.”

  Agricola gaped at the optio, the full weight of his words hitting him in the chest like a hammer blow. A sick sense of dread opened up inside him like the gaping maw of Tartarus, dark and bottomless. If not for him, Roscius would be safe at Isca, not being roasted alive at the hands of the Cambrians. If not for him, Calvus would not be lying on the filthy, bloodied ground. If not for him, twenty-two good men would still be drawing breath. If not for him—

  “Sir!” Naso barked.

  Agricola’s hands were shaking uncontrollably, and bile rushed to his throat. Naso stepped in close as Agricola bent and puked, wet vomit dribbling down his chin.

  “First fight, was it?” Naso stepped away, ignoring the puke on his boots. “I’ve seen it happen more than once,” he said louder. “But you’re alive, that’s what counts. You’re not the first to hurl after your first, and you won’t be the last.”

  “Roscius . . .” Agricola said. “We have to . . .”

  “Listen,” Naso’s voice was a harsh whisper. “The senior tribune is dead. The centurion is dead. We’ve lost men here, and we’re at the arse-end of cunt-land with only a vague idea of where we’re going. You’re in command now, sir. You have to hold it together, or we’re all dead. If the lads get an inkling that you’ve lost the fucking plot, they’ll fall apart.”

  Agricola balled his fists to stop his hands from shaking. It barely worked, but the tension seemed to give him some measure of control. “All right,” he said, wiping his chin. “All right.”

  Naso looked into his eyes, gauging him for a moment. Then: “Orders, sir?”

  Agricola took a deep, trembling breath. “Get those men on a pyre. Leave the barbarians for the ravens. Put anyone not on burial detail on guard and keeping a sharp lookout. Full kit and shield—ditch everything else but water. I want us moving and moving fast. Get ’em fed, watered, and on the move.”

  “Very good, sir.” Naso saluted, turned on his heel, and began haranguing the troops, leaving Agricola alone to survey the carnage. Then he looked out of the encampment and to the wilds of Cambria. Somewhere out there, Roscius was being tortured to death. And there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing but soldier on. “Naso!” he called.

  “Sir?”

  “You’re acting centurion now. Choose your own optio—you know these men better than I.”

  Naso nodded and glanced at Calvus’ body. “We used to joke that this was the only way I’d get a fucking promotion. It was funny at the time, I suppose.”

  “Carry on,” was all Agricola had to say.

  Agricola led now, marching at the front of the column and, like Roscius, he set a fast pace. He referred only once to the tablet from Paulinus—they were not far away from his last given location. But, Agricola thought, not far was still far enough; the Cambrians were out there somewhere, probably still hungry for Roman blood, even though they’d left forty corpses in the marching camp.

  Forty.

  Almost two to one losses, he realized. Why, he wondered, would they attack a defended position? Admittedly, the assault had been a surprise, but still—the tribesmen had come off worse and must have known they would.

  It made no sense. Why would men just t
hrow their lives away like that? True, the best tactic any barbarian could employ against a Roman force was ambush and surprise: it was the only way a legion could be bested.

  He focused on the question to keep from dwelling on Roscius’ fate, and it continued to vex him until they drew close to the ruin that had once been a village. The smoke he had seen from the marching camp still drifted skyward from the blackened buildings, and the place stank of death. Roman cavalry patrolled the outskirts, but the village itself was alive with legionaries of the Valeria Victrix—the Twentieth Legion: two centuries of infantry and one turma of horsemen, a full thirty-man squadron. Such a force would be a hard target and one that answered his question as to why his men had been raided. They would have been easier pickings.

  Shrill screams intermingled with the rhythmic sound of hammer on nail rent the air as the soldiers erected crucifixes—children writhing in agony on the wood, screaming for their mothers for succor. The women could provide none—those left in the village were being systematically raped and murdered by the men of the Twentieth.

  Agricola drew to a halt, mouth agape, unable to comprehend the horror of the scene. The “work” must have been going on all night. He looked at Naso, whose weasel face was grim.

  “They had it coming to them,” he said, but the look in his eyes betrayed the harshness in his voice.

  Fury burned through Agricola, coursing through his veins like white-hot lava. A cavalryman approached, munching on an apple. “Hey, boys,” he said, his lispy accent betraying him as a Batavian.

  “Who is in command here?” Agricola screamed at him—clearly taking him aback.

  The Batavian shrugged—a big ruddy-faced man, his long brown hair streaming from the back of helmet. “A couple of centurions—they in there,” he added. He pronounced his T’s like a D, and his Latin was not the best. “They . . . how you say . . . getting into the swing of things.”

  Agricola stormed past him, leaving the men of the Tenth in his wake. He came up behind a legionary on top of a blond-haired woman; she had turned her head to one side and was staring vacantly into space as the soldier grunted and gasped over her. Agricola seized the back of his armor and hauled him off, throwing him to the ground. Furious, the man looked as though he was about to leap up and attack him, but he saw the crest on Agricola’s helmet and recognized him as an officer. Agricola kicked him in the face, sending him sprawling. “You fucking animal!” Agricola’s voice was strangled with fury. “Stop this. Stop this now! All of you!”

  His voice cut through the chaos around him as men stopped to look. “You are Roman soldiers!” he shouted. “Not barbarians!”

  “What the fuck is going on?” another man’s voice—so strident it could only belong to a centurion—cut over his.

  The centurion—a tall man with a livid scar down his face—shoved his men aside and made his way forward. As he saw Agricola, he shook his head. “Sir.” He drew up and saluted. “Centurion Mamercus Mummius Flacca of the Second Century . . .”

  “I don’t give a fuck who you are!” Agricola cut him off. The man’s face reddened with anger, but it was matched by Agricola’s own. “Cut those children down. Now! And call your men off! I’ll have you on a charge for this—”

  “We’re following orders, sir,” Flacca interrupted. “From the governor himself.”

  It gave Agricola a moment of pause, but the smug smile of victory on Flacca’s weather-beaten face burned it away. “The governor isn’t here,” Agricola said. “I am. And I am ordering you to cut those children down and call your men off.”

  They glared at each other for long moments; Agricola could see righteous fury warring with army procedure within Flacca. Procedure won. “Cut ’em down!” he shouted. “And put your cocks away. The tribune here orders it.”

  “I’ll have you broken to the ranks for this,” Agricola spat.

  “I expect you’ll have to report it to the governor, sir,” Flacca’s tone was even, laced with the certainty that it would be Agricola who was going to be called to task. But that moment, Agricola didn’t give a damn.

  He turned away from the man. “Naso!” he shouted as the men of the Tenth made their way cautiously forward. “Get Felix and some of the younger ones to round to up the women. Have some men see to the children—get their wounds bound.”

  “Most will have broken legs, sir,” Flacca put in from behind him. “Easier to nail them up that way, and they die quicker.”

  Agricola rounded on him. “Then that’s tough shit for your men,” he said. “Because they’ll be bearing their stretchers. Get your people together,” he added. “You—and your Batavians—will escort me to the Twentieth’s encampment.”

  “We have orders, sir . . .”

  “And so do I. While you bastards were engaged in all this mindless brutality, my century was attacked last night. We lost men.”

  “And so have we,” Flacca said. “Your boys’ shields—Second Augusta, down in Isca? Everybody knows the south is quieter than a houseful of Vestal Virgins—we’ve seen the sharp end here. We’re soldiers, not guardsmen.”

  “Shut your mouth. And obey my orders, Centurion.”

  Flacca saluted and turned away, haranguing his men. Agricola watched him, the fury ebbing out of him like wine from a cup as Naso approached.

  “If he’s telling the truth about his orders, this could go hard on you, sir,” he said. “Like as not, these people would do worse to ours if they had us. You know that. Your mate Roscius . . .”

  “Like I said, Naso. We’re not barbarians. We’re Romans. We’re better than they are.”

  The march was cold and silent; Agricola had the Batavian cavalry decurion—Magnusanus—throw his turma out in a screen around the legionaries to keep a look out for the war band who had attacked them the previous evening.

  War band.

  It wasn’t a war band, and Agricola knew it. Those men were poorly equipped and hardly warriors—they were men driven to desperation by the acts of Flacca and soldiers like him. And good men like Roscius were now paying the price. Somewhere out there, Roscius was screaming in his own hell as they were taking savage vengeance on him and the others. It made Agricola sick to his stomach. Sick because he could not help his friend, sick that his actions were the cause of Roscius’ fate, and sick that this was the reality of what they now faced. Slaughter and vengeance, vengeance and slaughter. The seeds of generations of hatred had been sown here.

  Hatred.

  Agricola could feel it emanating from the men of the Twentieth as they marched north, their glares, their muttered comments, and the wads of phlegm spat on the grass as they tramped on. He had not won any friends here, and these were men who would—–perhaps—–have to follow his orders in the future.

  As they marched on, he saw that the evidence of war was scored deeper on the landscape with each mile they traveled. Farms destroyed, villages burned, civilians killed. Each place they marched past seemed to Agricola to be more vile than the next. Crucifixes jutted from the ground in ever-increasing number, the rotting bodies that hung from them a feast for the ravens. It was more than simple detritus of battle, Agricola realized. This was deliberate and systematic—the most horrific tortures had been inflicted on these people. That the Cambrians inflicted barbarism on their captives was to be expected—but these tribesmen hardly presented a Hannibalistic threat to the empire, and he could not understand why a Roman governor would allow such savagery to be perpetrated in the name of Rome.

  Or indeed, order it perpetrated, as it seemed.

  The images of were branded on Agricola’s mind’s eye by the time they drew close to the Twentieth Legion’s marching camp.

  “There we go.” Magnusanus trotted up to him as the fortification came into view. “Home for a while at least.” The decurion did not seem to hold him in the same contempt as his infantry counterparts. He leaned down in his saddle. “Me and my boys don’t like it any more than you do, sir. But Flacca’s right
—those were his orders. As you saw on the way here, it isn’t only his century and that lot. This is how the whole campaign has gone.”

  Agricola looked up at him. “It’s wrong, Decurion.”

  “It’s war, sir.”

  The encampment was truly vast, surrounded by a broad, deep ditch, well defended with a rampart and palisade. Agricola saw cavalrymen on the horizon in all directions, patrolling the vicinity, ready to gallop back with the news of any prospective assault.

  As the Tenth and their escort plodded across the muddied plank that led into the marching camp, they were greeted by howls of derision by the men of the Twentieth, who instantly recognized the dual Capricorn blazon of the Second Augusta’s shields. Agricola bore the insults with stoicism; the men of the Tenth, however, had no such compunction and hurled abuse back, insulting the mothers, fathers, and manhood of their counterparts. This went on for some time until they were met by the Twentieth’s primus pilus—the leading centurion—a gladius-straight hard case with the face of a man who seemed to have been born old.

  “I’ll get your men billeted, Tribune,” he said, nodding a greeting to Magnusanus. “I take it you’re going get drunk and fuck your horse.”

  Magnusanus sighed. “I wish I could,” he said. “But ever since you’ve had your lips around my horse’s cock, he doesn’t want to know me anymore. It’s breaking my heart. This, perhaps, is why I get drunk all the time.” The Batavians got a laugh out of that, but Agricola was relieved that if his own men were amused, they kept their eyes front and their mouths shut. The primus refrained from response, deigning only to make an obscene gesture at the Batavian.

  “Primus.” Flacca shouldered his way forward. “A word.”