by Ian Ross
‘Hold on! They’re our scouts! Put up your javelins…’
The first rider cleared the river, and would have raced straight on up the track if Castus had not seized his bridle. The horse reared, stamped and shied.
‘What happened? Brigonius, report!’
The second rider came up out of the river, the injured man sliding from the saddle with the shaft of a spear jutting from his side.
‘They’re dead – the two Pictish chiefs,’ the exhausted scout gasped. ‘Ulcagnus and Vendognus. Dead in their huts – poisoned…’
‘Where are Marcellinus and Strabo?’ Castus shouted, clinging to the bridle. ‘Somebody catch that third horse…’
‘Don’t know… A party of warriors recognised us. They killed Buccus, and then attacked us.’
‘Juno protect us,’ Castus said. He seized the scout and dragged him off the horse. ‘I’m going over there to find our men and bring them out if I can,’ he called to the troops behind him. ‘I need two volunteers who can ride.’ Better than me, that is, he thought. Culchianus and Vincentius stepped forward, saluting. ‘Get up on those other horses. The rest of you, take the injured man and get back to the fort, double pace. Tell Timotheus to prepare for attack, and if I’m not back in one hour, he should take command.’
He swung up into the saddle of the scout’s horse. Even now, he was not sure what he intended to do. All he could hear was the oath he had sworn to protect Marcellinus with his life.
‘Don’t stand there, go!’ he shouted, and swept out his sword. He slapped at the nearest man with the flat of his blade, and all of them broke into motion at once, spilling back from the river and away up the hill towards the fort.
The river was quiet now, whispering over the stony bed. Castus turned in the saddle. The two soldiers were mounted behind him, spears in hand.
‘You ready?’ He caught Culchianus’s answering nod. ‘Keep close behind me and watch my back. Let’s go.’
He kicked his heels into the horse’s flanks, and the animal leaped forward into the water.
7
Chaos ruled the Pictish camp. Figures ran and shouted in the firelight, brandishing torches, shadows racing and weaving, smoke hanging in the air. The three riders came up out of the trees at a hard gallop.
‘Keep behind me,’ Castus called back over his shoulder. ‘Stay low and stay together.’ He pulled off his helmet and slung it over the saddle horn; no need to draw attention to himself just yet. His horse was already panicking, and he kept a tight grip on the reins.
Into the light of the fires, they rode together. Figures scattered to either side, shouting, some of them raising spears. Castus could see the humped bulk of the great hut at the centre of the encampment – the mass of people was thickest there. He felt a plunging reckless fury running in his blood.
A javelin flashed past his ear; he ducked low over the horse’s mane, and heard someone cry out behind him. Small bands of warriors moved in packs, angry and confused, but there were no clear allegiances between any of them. In a circle of firelight Castus saw a torn body sprawled on the turf, bright with blood: the scout Buccus, with four javelins stuck in his back. He saw a man in a chariot, one of the chiefs, screaming to the warriors gathering around him.
Dragging on the reins, Castus pulled the horse to a halt. The animal backed, circling, breathing hard. He was in the thick of the Pictish muster now, warriors all around him, women and children too. Scanning the faces, the massed shadows, he willed Marcellinus to show himself, or Strabo – as if by picturing them vividly enough he could cause them to appear. But the crowd had noticed him now, identified him as an outsider. Hoarse voices built into a chant – something like Ladha Ruamnai, but he could guess what it meant. Kill the Romans.
Culchianus was beside him, seizing the bridle of his horse. For a moment, lost in angry indecision, he could not tell what the man was shouting.
‘…have to get away… Centurion, we’ll never find them in this mess!’
He was right, Castus knew. At any moment the crowd would gather force and turn on them. But Marcellinus was still out there somewhere, maybe close. He twisted in the saddle, looking to left and right. Across the heads of the throng he saw a figure standing in a cart: a woman with a spear in her hand. Cunomagla. She raised her head as she noticed him, her strong jaw set, then lifted the spear and pointed away towards the river. Go.
‘Ride fast, ahead of me, and don’t stop.’
The two soldiers were already moving, and Castus hauled his own horse around and booted it in the flanks. The animal was sweating, half blown and terrified by the flames all around, but it leaped forward again and plunged towards the darkness of the riverbank. Castus just clung on as best he could.
Ahead he saw the two soldiers riding hard; Vincentius was hurt, slumped low over the saddle horns. A man stepped up ahead of them, and Culchianus drove his spear through him.
Movement to the right: one of the chariot carts, a spearman in the back and the driver whipping the ponies furiously.
‘Keep going!’ Castus yelled. ‘Don’t hang back!’
The cart veered, angling to cut him off, the spearman standing straight with feet braced and weapon raised in both hands. Onward, the vehicle closing in, then Castus dragged on the reins and jinked his horse round to the right. The animal slammed into the flank of the lead chariot pony, and the shock of the impact almost knocked him out of the saddle. Bent forward, he felt the spearhead slicing the air above his back. He swept his sword round, backhanded, and the blade sheared flesh and bone. Then he was clear, the panicked horse carrying him on as the cart veered away again.
Two men before him, raising shields, spears levelled. The first fell back as the horse kicked, and the second made a clumsy stab from his left. Castus swayed in the saddle, then he grabbed the shaft of the spear and wrenched it aside. He swung his sword across his body, down over the saddle horn to chop into the Pict’s shoulder. The man howled and fell beneath the hooves, and Castus rode clear.
Trees to either side, then he was at the river and the water was bursting around him. On the far bank his two soldiers were waiting, and they turned together to confront their pursuers.
But the ford was clear behind them: figures on the far bank screamed from the darkness between the trees, and Castus could make out the cart circling back, the wounded spearman hunched in the back.
Riding again, the soldiers to either side, he urged his horse on up the dark slope towards the fort. The sound of a horn carried on the night air, then the calls of the sentries.
‘Halt there! Declare yourselves!’
‘Fortuna Homebringer! Fortuna Homebringer!’ Castus heard his own voice shouting, hoarse, but felt only the burning pain in his throat and the heaviness of failure in his gut.
‘I had the men light cooking fires,’ Timotheus said, handing him a bowl of hot broth. ‘Reckoned they might not get another chance for a while.’
Castus nodded, spooning up soup, then cramming his mouth with hard bread. Astonishingly, so it now seemed, he and the two soldiers had returned from their foray alive. Vincentius had caught a javelin in the shoulder, but it was only a flesh wound and he could still use a weapon. The wounded scout, though, had been dead before he was brought back into the fort.
‘What’s going on over there?’ he said, his mouth full. ‘Can you see anything?’
‘Nothing very much. Just the usual clamour. The crowd’s getting thicker around the main hut, by the pattern of the torches.’
Castus swallowed heavily and wiped his mouth. ‘I ought to address the men,’ he said. ‘Form them up, but keep the sentries posted.’
‘Centurion,’ Timotheus said quietly, dropping to kneel beside him. ‘The men all know what we’re up against. They know what you’re up against as well.’
Castus looked around him: the legionaries spaced along the perimeter, the others gathered in the glow of the cooking fires. All that they had feared these last fifteen days, all their worst and mos
t horrible nightmares, were now coming true. Of course they knew what they were facing.
‘All the same. It’s only right.’
As the horn sounded the assembly he paced the line of the oval wall surrounding the camp, assessing what needed to be done. His thighs still ached from riding, and there was a cold trembling sensation in his legs. His hands too felt oddly loose and weak, and he clenched his right fist and smacked it into his palm repeatedly until he felt the strength in his arms returning.
This was what his centurion had meant all those years ago, Castus realised. The bronze mask of leadership. At the time he had thought that the mask just projected inflexible strength. Now he knew the truth: the mask concealed fear.
‘Assembly ready, centurion,’ Timotheus cried. Forty-six men stood drawn up in the last glow of the cooking fires, with the remaining ten still on watch around the walls. Castus strode forward and turned to face them, planting his feet firmly, hands clasped behind his back. He tried not to see them as an assembly of ghosts, of lost spirits, but the winged Victory figures painted on their shields appeared more substantial than the men themselves.
‘Brothers,’ he called, his voice low and steady, ‘things do not look good. Two of our men are missing, along with one of the scouts, and two scouts are dead. The Domini Marcellinus and Strabo have either been killed or have fallen into the hands of the enemy. The Picts, for some reason of their own, have turned against us and will probably attempt an assault very soon.’
He waited a moment to let the words sink in. It was better that these things should be said out loud, before the contagion of unspoken fear could eat away at them.
‘Some of you will be thinking we should pull out now, before the enemy muster against us. But that’s a bad idea. Before we got two miles down the road the Picts would be all around us. Besides, we were sent here to protect the envoy, and we’re not leaving while there’s still a chance he’s alive. The enemy outnumber us, but we’re trained soldiers, well armed and equipped, while they’re a spear-chucking rabble. We’ve got a strong defensive position here, and we can hold out as long as necessary. They hope, the Picts, that we’ll break and run. They hope they can intimidate us with their numbers and their noise. But if we stick close together and hold these walls, we’ll stand up to anything they can throw against us.
‘An hour ago, I ordered the three remaining scouts to ride for Bremenium with a message for the commander there about what’s happened. Any relief force could take days to arrive, but if we can hold off the enemy for only a day or two they’ll realise our strength and we can negotiate with honour. They give us the prisoners back. We march out of here and go home.’
He let the stress fall on the last word. No need to raise false hopes; they all knew how steeply the odds were stacked against them. But it was something, at least, to believe in.
‘Meanwhile, we’ve got work to do. Our current perimeter is too long to hold effectively – we need to shorten it. I want the wall to the south broken down and the stones carried back to make a new line here.’ He swept his arm forward and back. ‘Have the mules brought up into the enclosure and secured. Then six men fully armed to go with the slaves down to the stream with all the canteens and water containers. Fill as much water as you can carry. Two sections at a time can fall out and rest. Sleep if you can. The others will remain under arms at the defences. Optio, set the fatigues. Dismissed!’
As the assembly broke up, Castus went to the east wall and found Caccumattus sheltering there, staring out across the valley into the darkness. He had been surprised that the unimpressive little interpreter had not already made a run for it.
‘Will they attack tonight?’ he asked in a low whisper.
Caccumattus sucked his teeth, and then shrugged. ‘No, I think. Picti no to fighting in night. Too much dark – only evil gods to see them!’
‘Oh. Well, that’s some comfort, I suppose.’
He would be prepared even so. It was still possible that the interpreter had stayed in the camp to deceive them into relaxing their guard. Distant horn cries came from across the valley, and the scattered fires had coalesced into one large blaze. A funeral pyre, perhaps? Impossible to tell at this distance.
A light rain was falling, but the night was warm. Castus watched the men building the new wall, and after a while fell to hefting stones himself, glad of the physical labour. The water party returned from the stream, and then the camp settled into a tensed quiet, every man wrapped in his cloak, gazing warily out into the night. Above them was the thin arc of the new rising moon.
‘You see them? Down there to the right, in the long grass… There’s another – he just moved.’
Castus followed the optio’s pointing finger, but could see nothing at first. It was not yet dawn, but the light had increased to a damp greyness, and the surrounding plain and the slopes of the hills looked like heaped fog. His eyes smarted after eight hours staring at nothing.
‘There! See, he moved again!’
This time Castus caught the movement: a man lying flat on the slope with a cape pulled across his head and body. Once he’d seen one he quickly spotted more: the hillside below the fort was covered in creeping cloaked men, edging closer now and again, crawling on their bellies.
‘Think they might try and rush us?’ Timotheus said. He appeared very young in the half-light, his cheeks covered with a downy beard, but his eyes were hard and sunken deep.
‘No, we’d cut them down before they got close. They’re just scouting us out.’
A dry snap came from the slope, and one of the men at the wall fell back with a grunt of pain.
‘Heads down, shields up! Cover yourselves!’ Castus shouted. ‘What in Jupiter’s name was that?’
‘Lockbow,’ Evagrius called. ‘Native hunting weapon. I saw a few of them when I was in the Wall garrison. Like a short bow mounted on a stave. You can aim and loose them when you’re lying down.’
‘Shit of Hades,’ Castus said.
A volley of snapping sounds came from the prone figures in the grass, the short arrows clattering against the wall and the raised shields or arcing overhead. The first shot had hit Culchianus in the shoulder.
‘Any of you with slings – over here now!’ Pointless to waste javelins on the skulking bowmen. Six men jogged across the enclosure, heads down, and dropped behind the wall.
‘Whenever you see one of them move, crack him!’
Almost at once the first sling whirred and snapped, sending its stone flat and true to the target. A cry from the slope, and the men along the wall cheered. Another volley of arrows, and more slingstones hurled back, then the cloaked figures were getting up and scrambling back down the slope. Castus saw one, then two, knocked down by slingstones as they ran.
Behind them, the first sun was glinting through the ragged clouds over the mountains to the east. Castus turned, kneeling, and touched his brow. He muttered a prayer under his breath, and when he raised his head he saw most of the other men doing the same. Strabo, he reminded himself, was no longer here to disapprove.
He stood up, drew his sword and held the blade levelled above his head to reflect the light of the dawn.
‘Unconquered Sun,’ he cried out in his best parade voice. ‘We devote ourselves to your glory. Send your light between us and evil, and give us victory this day!’
The shout of acclamation from the men around him was loud and sudden, spears clashing against shield rims. The long tense night was behind them, and they were drawing strength from the sun. Castus smiled as he sheathed his blade. So far, things were going well.
An hour later, the Picts began to gather on the plain and the surrounding hills. They came from the ford in massed columns, men on foot and on horseback, some riding in carts. Outside the range of javelin or slingshot they assembled in their warbands, sitting or squatting in the grass or leaning on their spears. Others appeared on the far side of the stream, where the ground rose towards their camp, many of them with light hunting javelins and th
e cross-shaped lockbows. The sky was heavy and grey, and a damp wind came down off the high hills.
‘How many do you think, Evagrius?’
‘Around two thousand, centurion. At least.’
‘That’s about what I make it.’
‘Forty to one. Not bad odds!’
But now a horseman was riding slowly from the enemy mass, his spear raised and tipped with a leafy green branch. As he approached, Castus recognised the crest of orange hair, the goatlike scowl. Talorcagus, enemy of Rome.
‘Caccumattus, to me.’ The interpreter scuttled along the wall to kneel beside Castus. The Pictish chief drew closer, his horse mounting the lower slope. Another man rode behind him carrying a sack.
‘Ruamnai!’ the Pict shouted, punching his spear above his head. He began to call out his address, the words gnarled and ugly.
‘He say: Romani kill Picti chiefs, Ulcagnus and Vendognus,’ the interpreter said, translating rapidly. ‘Try to make chief-talk to fail. But now Talorcagus – him – he high chief. King.’
‘So I guessed.’
The Pict was still shouting, still brandishing his leafy spear.
‘He say: Picti find killers, make punish. No want fighting with Romani soldier. He say you putting down weapon, go home in peace.’
Castus spat between his teeth. No doubt those among his men who understood the native language were already circulating the offer.
‘Ox shit,’ he said, and grabbed Caccumattus by the arm, pulling him close. ‘You tell him this: Roman soldiers never surrender! And we didn’t come all this way just to go home without a fight, either. Tell him his people must have short memories if they’ve forgotten what the Emperor Severus did to them a hundred years ago. We want Marcellinus, Strabo and our two soldiers back, then we’ll think about going home.’
Caccumattus, released, stood up and called out the reply. There was something like defiance in his voice, quite unlike his wavering tone when he tried to speak Latin. Talorcagus circled his horse, and then shouted back.
