by Ian Ross
Promise me you’ll protect him. Swear to me that you’ll look after him… Castus felt his head empty. The men behind him were silent, watching. How many of them were left now? Something between twenty or thirty still fit to fight. Another attack would break them, and all would die. They, Strabo and Marcellinus too. Already his fingers were unbuckling his belt.
‘What are you doing? Centurion?’
He slung the sword baldric from his shoulder and jumped back off the wall. He passed his sword and belt to Timotheus and his helmet to Culchianus.
‘Keep these safe for me.’
‘No! You can’t do this…’ Timotheus was grey-faced, stammering. The other men crowded behind him, some of them reaching out to their centurion, others hanging back, hiding the shame of hope.
‘Get into rank!’ Castus bellowed at them with all the parade-ground brass he could muster. He stooped, shrugging the mail shirt off over his shoulders. The links clashed around his head and then dropped heavily to the ground before him.
‘Take that with you as well… Optio Timotheus, I’m handing command of the century to you. Form up the surviving men with all their kit, and load the wounded who can’t walk onto the mules. You’ll march out of here and keep going till you reach the river. Fill canteens, wash your wounds then keep going. Keep close to Senomaglus and the Votadini, and don’t let your guard down till you reach Bremenium.’
‘Centurion,’ Timotheus said. There were tears in his eyes, and Castus could not bear to look at him.
‘Somebody needs to tell what happened here,’ he said quietly.
‘We’ll come back for you,’ Timotheus said, and then grabbed Castus in a firm embrace. Culchianus stepped up and did the same, other men gripping his shoulders and arms.
‘We’ll come back – and we’ll bring the whole legion with us. We’ll scythe those bastards down – every fucking one of them!’
‘Do that,’ Castus said. With his unbelted tunic hanging below his knees he stepped up onto the wall and jumped down on the far side. Open-handed, he walked steadily down the slope, stepping over the crumpled bodies on the blood-damp grass. Behind him he could hear Timotheus shouting the orders to form the men up.
Twenty paces, then thirty. The Picts gathered on the plain were making a noise now, a rising hiss and then a gathering roar. He kept his breath steady. He kept walking.
Part 2
9
It took five of them to wrestle him to the ground and strip him of his tunic, and he fought them all the way. He dropped one with a kick to the groin, head-butted another and broke his nose. Then they began clubbing him with spears and the flats of their swords, until he was kneeling with his arms bound tightly behind his back, and Castus felt them wrench from his neck the gold torque he had won at Oxsa.
This is what surrender feels like, he thought. But he was oblivious to the pain and the humiliation. Slaves have no feelings, he told himself.
He was dragged to his feet and made to stumble forward with a spearshaft pressed to the nape of his neck to keep his head down. All he could see was the dirty turf, and the bare feet of his guards scuffing along beside him, kicking him sometimes when he struggled. Then they got into the mass of the Pictish gathering, and there it was worse. Women screamed at him and threw stones and clods of earth: he was the leader of the soldiers that had slaughtered their sons, their brothers, their husbands. He felt their spit flecking over his bare back, until the guards drove the women away from him.
‘Castus!’ He twisted his head against the spearshaft and saw Marcellinus beside him, in the same wretched condition.
‘I’m sorry,’ the envoy gasped, ‘it wasn’t…’ One of the guards struck him with a spear-butt, and Marcellinus was silent.
They passed through the stream, the water splashing up into Castus’s face. Then they were moving up the far slope into the main Pictish encampment. The two prisoners were thrown together onto the dirty straw of a wattle-walled enclosure – a pigsty, Castus guessed, by the smell. He rolled onto his side, then he knelt and flexed his shoulders, trying to break the cords that tied his wrists.
‘Don’t,’ Marcellinus said. ‘They’re damp rawhide – you’ll just pull them tighter.’
The envoy lay on his side, his skin very pale and grey. Castus could see the welts of a beating across his shoulders.
‘What happened?’
‘They took us just as we were going into the council hut,’ Marcellinus told him. ‘We heard shouts from across the camp, then we were surrounded by armed warriors – it must have been planned that way in advance. Then we learned that Ulcagnus and Vendognus had been found dead in their huts by their own men. We were treated well at first, Strabo and I – put in a hut by ourselves, with a guard at the door. Later, I suppose once Talorcagus had taken control and they’d started the attack on your position, they dragged us out and beat us, then tied us with sacks over our heads…’
‘Why did they think you’d done it?’
Marcellinus just grimaced, shaking his head against the dirty straw. The gate was dragged open, and another body was thrown into the pen beside them: Strabo, with a purple bruise across the side of his face.
‘My men,’ Castus said. ‘Have they got away yet? Did either of you see them go?’
Both shook their heads. ‘Senomaglus promised me he’d protect them,’ Marcellinus said. ‘I think I believe him. I hope I believe him. But there was nothing else you could do. You fought well, but it was over.’
Several hours passed before the guards returned. Rain fell, and Castus tipped back his head and opened his mouth and tried to drink it from the air. Then the wattle gate was flung open again and the guards were among them, dragging at their aching arms, threatening them with spears.
Heads down, they were led across the encampment, between low huts and shelters and the walls of other animal pens. Castus fixed his mind on the knot of pain between his shoulders; his hands and arms were numb, and he stumbled as he was dragged along. He heard Marcellinus cry out beside him, and then he was forced down to kneel.
‘No, this is barbaric!’ Marcellinus hissed between his teeth. The envoy was struggling against his guards now, trying to break away.
Castus raised his eyes slowly, wincing against the ache in his neck. Before him was a low mound surrounded by open space, and on the mound was a single tree. The bark had been stripped away to the bare white wood, and the branches lopped off close to the trunk leaving long spikes sticking up. Marcellinus was shouting in the Pictish tongue, oblivious to the guards around him.
‘It’s a triumph tree,’ he cried out. ‘Cran na buadag… Don’t look at it!’
But Castus continued to stare, dazed. Groups of warriors were gathering around the mound and the stripped tree. With a lurch of horror, Castus recognised what they were carrying. Heads – severed human heads, some carried by the hair, others with a thumb hooked inside the jaw. The heads of Roman soldiers.
Beside him, he heard Strabo muttering prayers to his Christian god. He wanted to pray himself, or shout out in rage, but his throat was locked and he could not make a sound. He watched as the warriors climbed up to the tree, some of them clambering on each other’s backs, and one by one stabbed the severed heads onto the spiked branches. Five heads, then ten, then twenty… Castus watched and counted, sickened and dizzy. He saw the face of Vincentius staring back at him. Then Brigonius and his comrades, the three scouts he had sent to summon help from Bremenium. One of the slaves he had armed and offered freedom. Draucus and Jucundus…
No Timotheus, no Culchianus. The heads had been taken from the fallen soldiers left lying in the compound wrapped in their blankets. All of them decapitated after death.
Marcellinus was shaking his head fiercely. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’
Now the last of the warriors climbed down from the mound, leaving the tree adorned with thirty human heads budding like terrible bulbous fruit from the bare branches. Around the base of the trunk the Picts had stacke
d the broken shields and shattered weapons gathered from the battle site. The warriors stood in a massed circle around the mound, raised their own weapons in salute and howled out their chant of victory.
Castus had seen many strange and horrific sights in his life, but the stripped tree with its ghastly trophies left him sick and weak. They were his own men, those pale bobbing heads, men he had trained and led in battle. Men who had trusted him to command them. If they murder me now, I deserve it.
But the warriors were falling back from the mound, joining the vast throng that filled the open space all around. A line of carts drawn by shaggy ponies turned between them and began to circle the tree. In the lead cart, Talorcagus stood up tall and proud, raising his spear to the shouts of victory.
‘Look at him,’ Marcellinus said. ‘He’s sealed his rule in blood already.’
Behind the new king rode his nephew Drustagnus, then the other chiefs of the Picts. Only the woman, Cunomagla, was not among their number. Castus felt glad of that – he could not bear the idea of seeing her gloat over his slain. The carts drew to a halt, the chiefs dismounting. Now a strange figure was moving between them, an ancient woman dressed in grey tatters, carrying a leather bag.
‘The witch,’ Strabo said, with a hissing intake of breath.
The chiefs and their warriors moved behind the witch as she advanced, shambling, towards the bound prisoners. Beside him, Castus saw Marcellinus give a sudden lunge and try to get up. The guards wrestled him back to his knees.
‘That’s my saddlebag,’ Strabo said quietly, in dawning horror. ‘She’s got my saddlebag…’
The witch halted, throwing the bag down; Castus recognised it now, a square satchel of tooled Roman leather. He had seen Strabo carrying it on his pony. Throwing up her arms, the old woman let out a long keening wail. She reeled in a circle, and then dropped forward to scrabble at the bag. The chiefs and the warriors drew closer around her.
Castus felt the tip of a spear pressing at the hollow of his throat, another at his back. He could not breathe, could not move.
The witch-woman knelt upright with a cry of satisfaction, holding up a small brass bottle with a stopper. The assembled Picts fell back, gasping and shouting.
‘Cough medicine,’ Strabo said, with a despairing grimace. ‘It’s only cough medicine…’
But now Talorcagus stepped to the front of the group and raised his arm, pointing at Strabo. Guards to either side seized the imperial agent by the elbows and started to drag him forward.
‘No, surely not!’ Marcellinus cried suddenly in pained disbelief. ‘They’re saying it’s poison… they’re saying he murdered the chiefs with it...!’
They don’t care, Castus thought. Everything now had a terrible sense of inevitability. Marcellinus made another sudden lunge, slipped from the grasp of his captors and leaped to his feet. He managed two long strides towards Strabo before one of the guards smashed at his leg with the flat of his sword. Castus heard the sharp snap of bone, and then Marcellinus was sprawled in the dirt, writhing and choking.
Strabo was made to kneel before the assembled chiefs. He looked very calm now, his face pale but clear and his eyes shining. One of the guards gripped his hair and drew back his head, raising a short curved knife to the sky. Castus could hear the chanting and the yells, but could understand nothing. His gaze was fixed on the kneeling man.
‘I am a soldier of Christ!’ Strabo shouted, suddenly and very loud. ‘Oh, Lord God, I commend my soul to you!’
The chanting grew louder, the chiefs stepping away from the pinned captive as the guard lowered his cruel blade.
‘In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,’ Strabo cried through clenched teeth, his face shining with fierce defiance, ‘I offer my soul to God in hope of salvation…’
Then the voices rose to a great shout, and Castus looked away quickly as he saw the knifeman move. When he glanced back, he saw the blood spraying across the bare earth, Strabo’s half-naked body tumbling sideways, the knife raised once more to the sky, shining red.
They freed his wrists, and he snarled in pain as sensation returned to his trapped hands. Before he could struggle, they dragged up his arms and tied them once more to a baulk of wood pinned behind his neck.
For the rest of that day they marched, up the hill from the encampment and on over high desolate moorland. There was only a small group of guards, twenty or thirty warriors with spears, and they moved at a steady lope, dragging Castus along with a halter around his neck. Marcellinus they carried on a crude stretcher, his broken leg wrapped in fleece.
Whenever he could, Castus straightened his back against the wood at his neck and gazed around him, trying to pick out landmarks he might remember, trying to gauge distance and direction. The sky was overcast, but as the day wore on he saw his shadow before him and slightly to his right, and knew they were travelling north-east-by-east. They crossed the mountain flank and descended, following a rushing stream into a broad valley that stretched almost to the northern horizon.
As evening came on he saw fires on the hilltops: beacons, and here and there the walls of small forts. Smaller fires moved in the valley below: lines of men with torches, streaming westwards towards the tribal muster. One small victory over Rome was not enough for them, Castus realised. Now the whole nation of the Picts was rising. He thought of his men, Timotheus and the rest, marching at full pace towards the frontier, with the Pictish horde surging behind them. He could not afford to think about these things. Only survival mattered now. Survival and, one day, vengeance – for Strabo, for the dishonoured bodies of his fallen soldiers, for the jubilation of the barbarians around their trophy tree. One day, he thought – and the hunger for that vengeance drove him on.
When night fell the guards led them up to one of the hill forts, a ring of stone set on a spur above a valley cleft into the mountainside. At the centre of the fort was a broken tower of massive masonry, and they built a large fire against the wall of it. The flames curled up over the mossy stones, throwing huge rearing shadows onto the surrounding hillsides. Castus lay at the edge of the light, chewing a hank of dried meat, with Marcellinus on his stretcher beside him.
‘Stupid of me,’ Marcellinus said, ‘to try and intervene like that. I couldn’t have done anything to stop them.’
‘Suppose not,’ Castus said. He would have done the same, he knew, if he hadn’t had a spear pressed into his throat.
Marcellinus was silent for a while. His broken leg was clearly paining him, but he was trying not to let it show.
‘So it was Talorcagus and his nephew,’ Castus said, ‘who poisoned the other chiefs.’
‘Almost certainly. And they probably killed Vepogenus too. And now they have the power to kill anyone who accuses them of it.’
‘And what about the woman… Cunomagla, you called her. Wasn’t she the wife of Vendognus?’
‘She was. Now his widow. But there was no love between the two of them. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was part of the conspiracy as well. With her husband gone she’s free to advance her own son as future king… Which puts her in competition with Drustagnus, of course…’
‘If they start fighting among themselves,’ Castus said, ‘all the better for us. What about Decentius, the renegade? Did you see him? I stuck a dart in his leg.’
‘You did? Good…’ Marcellinus managed to smile. ‘I didn’t see him, no. He’ll be around somewhere, though, if he lived. He’s sure to be involved in the plot.’
Castus frowned, remembering something he had forgotten in all the confusion of the last twelve hours. ‘He said… Decentius, I mean… he said something about the empire betraying us. Sending us to die deliberately. What did he mean?’
Marcellinus lay still. Perhaps thinking, Castus told himself. Perhaps trying to frame an acceptable answer.
‘I don’t know,’ the envoy said at last. ‘I confess I heard something similar from Strabo – he was taken away to meet with Decentius during our captivity.’
Cast
us decided to ask no more about it, for now. He gnawed off another bite of the dried meat and squeezed it between his molars. Whatever might have happened – or not – in the muttered conversations of conspiracy was nothing to do with him.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Marcellinus said.
Castus nodded. The meat was sticking his teeth together.
‘Why did you agree to surrender back there? I mean – what was going through your mind?’
The meat came free, and Castus swallowed it. He took his time before answering.
‘Your daughter… made me swear an oath. To protect you.’
‘Marcellina? She made you do that?’
‘Yes. To protect you and bring you home safely.’
Marcellinus tipped his head back. ‘Ha, aha!’ he said, gasping against the pain as he laughed. ‘Ha ha ha!’
In the grey of morning they set off again, moving north-east along a narrow track between the mountain slopes and the wide plain of the valley. The sky had cleared, and the sunlight came down in bright torrents, lighting the landscape to grey-green and golden brown. The hills and the plain below were striped with the rolling shadows of clouds and, in the far distance, the northern horizon was lined with bare blue mountains.
After five or six miles they forded a wide stream; then the trail swung eastwards. There were settlements of clustered huts across the plain, and the coils of a winding river glinting in the sunlight. The baulk of wood chafed against Castus’s neck with every step, and he could no longer feel his hands, but he kept marching.
Finally, as the sun set behind the hills, the trail curled around into a narrow valley and began to climb. The slope rose, until Castus could barely stagger upwards with his shoulders bent. He glanced up and saw a wall of massive stones looming above him in the twilight, almost twelve feet high with a wooden palisade along the top. The guards led him around the base of the wall, then up into a narrow opening between the rearing ramparts. A stone-lined passage, open to the sky above, sloped on upwards. The guards cried out to the men on the wall above them, and a heavy wooden gate opened.
