by Jules Watson
From his command post on a knoll beneath a dripping ash tree, Lucius could see the barbarian commanders moving among their own men, ordering them up and whipping them into some vague order. Their cursing and screaming rose as a roar through the rain, and the thrashing of their swords on their shields echoed the steady drum of the drops as they beat the earth.
Yet Lucius had no intention of letting these savages indulge in the usual battle posturing for long. His men, tired and wet and worn, were like hounds held tightly on a leash. He had only to release them, and this he finally did, the horns blaring out his order to advance and engage.
Out moved the auxiliary infantry, pausing to throw their first barrage of spears. The cloud of barbs flew up in an arc and disappeared into the sheets of rain, and though Lucius had little hope they would find their targets, such a barrage always demoralized the enemy.
Lucius cupped his hand to protect his eyes from the rain, straining to see how many had been downed by the spears, but the auxiliary infantry were now advancing as a single wall, and he found his eyes were locked instead on those rigid ranks, closing in on the shrieking enemy, who were still pounding their swords on their shields.
Even through the muffling drizzle Lucius heard the dull clash as the two armies met, and sections of his own lines wavered, the bright, tangled weave of barbarian clothes and weapons bleeding into the uniform ranks of Roman red, yellow and polished iron.
There was a momentary struggle, the flanks of both armies heaving in a confused ebb and flow of men, and then suddenly something changed. The barbarians were giving ground already, seeping back up the slope.
Lucius shifted in his saddle, uneasy. It was too soon for such a retreat – the barbarians had displayed little of their usual reckless ferocity. Then he glimpsed the prefect and the primus pilus racing over to him from different directions, and just then, the enemy line suddenly broke altogether and galloped up the rise, disappearing into the mouth of the valley.
An entire flank of his own auxiliary infantry, encouraged by this act of cowardice and the scent of an easy victory, took the opportunity to pursue. The prefect’s shout carried faintly to Lucius beneath the ash tree, but the tribune in charge of the pursuing men could not stop the red tide, their soldiers goaded by weeks of fear and exhaustion into leaping for revenge. As the first lines pounded away over the churned mud, so more soldiers followed.
Lucius spurred his horse from the knoll across the wide space around the army’s flank, the tribunes endeavouring to follow, but cut off from him by the surging tide of men. Lucius soon lost their cries behind as he galloped onwards, the rain and wind gusting into his face, his horse’s steps stumbling dangerously at times on the boggy ground. And as he was the only horseman behind the attacking infantry, so Lucius alone saw what happened.
Just inside the valley mouth another tiny glen sliced up into the mountain wall, and into this cleft the retreating Albans were streaming, shouting Roman soldiers on their heels. Lucius kicked his horse harder, screaming desperate commands that were lost in the rain, for he remembered with dread Agricola’s stern command never to follow the wild men into the hills. But it was too late.
Lucius’s throat was stopped with horror as the sides of the narrow glen suddenly erupted in a volley of arrows, and from the bracken slopes above poured hundreds of fresh barbarian warriors, their swords driving downwards into the confused ranks of Roman soldiers. His men scrambled to retreat, but only stumbled over themselves and the rocks, and were pushed into disarray by those pressing from behind.
By the time reinforcements raced to the glen’s mouth, it was over. The barbarians had not paused to ensure total victory, but merely killed and maimed as many as possible in the first downward rush and then melted away over the cliffs into the rocks and ferns.
Lucius lowered his sword, his voice spent in shouting. In the rain, he didn’t notice the tears of rage running down his cheeks.
Every muscle in Eremon’s body ached: his legs from running; his arms and shoulders from swinging a sword. And now, wedged here in a rock overhang in a high valley, it was his back giving him pain, awkwardly hunched on the damp earth. Yet he hardly noticed.
He barely registered the drip of rain from the cave wall, trickling down the back of his mailshirt; the angry rumble of his belly; or the jarring cold seeping up from the ground. The throb in his wrist, where he had caught a sword blow on his shield, took up most of his bodily awareness. Yet even that was only a reminder of the inner glow which consumed him and provided all the warmth he needed. It was the fire of triumph, victory, relief.
In the deepening dusk, Conaire’s eyes glittered with excitement, and Rori’s teeth flashed in the darkness of the shallow cave. Eremon grinned back. They felt it, too.
The night would be long, until tomorrow they moved out to regroup far from here. But for now, despite the lack of food or fire, they had all they needed.
So Eremon ignored the stink of drying blood and sweat, sank deeper into his filthy cloak, and let sleep claim him.
CHAPTER 51
Rhiann woke with a start inside the thick, dark walls of a northern dun. A storm was raging outside, the wind streaming over the grim peaks of the encircling mountains and down the valley to the little fort. Despite the hut’s wooden door and thick door-hide, the gusts were so strong that they forced their way under the thatch roof and between the tiny chinks in the wattle walls.
Shivering, Rhiann burrowed deeper into the furs on the guest bed. It wasn’t the storm that had woken her, though, but a dream, the first clear vision of Eremon she had received in moons. Yet it was a strange sending.
She was in the valley of light, holding the cauldron of Ceridwen in her hands. But its glow was dulled, and she could not feel its warmth in her fingers. In panic, she searched for Eremon, unable to see him. The eagles screeched their challenge into the clear air above, and around her she heard the frightened murmurs of her people. ‘Fear not,’ she said to them, yet she herself burned with fear.
Then there was a stirring among the people, and a light gleamed from far away, and she ran towards it until the hill slopes rose narrow and steep above her head. ‘I could not find you,’ she said to Eremon, looking up to him on his horse, tears in her eyes. ‘I searched but could not find you.’
Eremon smiled as he slid to the ground, and took her in his arms. ‘But I was waiting for you!’
They both laughed with relief, and when Rhiann pulled away from his embrace, the cauldron was a glowing bowl of heat in her hands. Alive again.
Blinking sleep from her eyes, Rhiann stared into the thick darkness, knowing that the dream had been triggered by the message she received that day. Eremon and Calgacus had won a great victory, and the Roman army had at last gone into retreat, weakened by the constant Alban harassment of the past few moons. And what should Rhiann’s path be now?
Feeling heavy and dull from lack of sleep, she asked Nectan about their journey as they broke their fast the next morning, before a blazing hearth-fire. She had done her best with the Creones and the Decantae, and was satisfied at the murmurs of rebellion that were growing louder the further north they travelled. Now they were deep in the territory of the Boresti, a small, scattered tribe living high on Alba’s mountain spine.
‘We are nearly at the Smertae border,’ Nectan confirmed, scooping up soft cheese with a crumbling piece of barley bannock. ‘Yet I advise not going further into those territories. The Smertae and the Lugi are all that stand between us and Maelchon’s lands, and they are, as far as we can tell, friendly with the Orcadian king.’
Something cold crawled under the surface of Rhiann’s skin. No, I wish to stay clear of the far north,’ she replied evenly. Do those tribes command many warriors?’
Nectan shrugged. ‘Not large enough to warrant the risk.’ He swallowed and glanced at her carefully. ‘By the Mother, your husband would be my friend no longer if I took you closer to the Orcades. Very soon, lady, we will reach the limits of our journey.’
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Rhiann’s heart soared at those words, for it meant they would soon be home, and she could lay down the mantle of control and fierceness she had donned moons ago. Now, after Samana, she wanted only to turn away from that hardness, and find and nurture something soft in her again.
Later, as the party climbed a long valley, she remained at the rear, musing on her dream. It wasn’t difficult to decipher – she needed to be back by Eremon’s side. Their individual power was at its most potent when they were joined.
With a surge of excitement Rhiann raised her face to the sun, which was struggling free from the shredded clouds above. Soon, her self-appointed mission would be complete, and she could not just tell Eremon she loved him, but make him believe it with her body. For Samana had been right in the midst of her twisted hatred. Rhiann had been incomplete, the passionate part of her imprisoned by the past.
Now, it was as if something had been awakened, for Rhiann’s body hungered just to feel Eremon’s bare skin against her own. And it was with her body that she would anoint them both, with the Mother’s light that shone through death and grief.
And betrayal.
Yes, surely where there was love, even betrayal, there was a place from which one could return.
On his return to his camp by the Forth, Agricola had not paused to bathe the dried salt spray from his face, or the grimy sweat from his body. Taking the haruspex, the priest he had brought from Eboracum, he made his way directly to the small temple he had caused to be built earlier in the season.
It was a square timber building with an open courtyard in the centre, and a room that held the sandstone shrines to the deities, with alcoves for the eagle emblems of the legions. The double timber gates had been left open all summer, to allow the god Janus to join his men on the field of war, and would not be closed now until all his units were back from their campaigns.
This day was one of double celebration for Agricola, though he had as yet heard no news from Lucius in the north. Perhaps it would be a triple triumph!
In the patch of sky framed by the temple courtyard, dark clouds milled restlessly, driven by the same keen wind which had slapped the waves against Agricola’s ship all the way north. Yet he barely felt the cool air on his bare arms, watching instead the ox blood run down the sacrificer’s knife with a secret smile. Agricola himself then dedicated the fallen beast to Mars, Jupiter and Venus Victoria, for his great triumph over the south-western British tribes whose rebellion he had just this summer quelled.
It had been an easy triumph, and the sight of those crushed bodies beneath his hooves as he inspected the battlefield afterwards had gone a long way to restoring the confidence that had been torn from him by last year’s Alban defeats. That, of course, and the holy island raid before he left, which had likewise been thoroughly successful.
Agricola savoured these things, as the priest touched the warm blood to his forehead. Yet as he bowed his head then, his prayers turned to something far more personal. For on his return to Eboracum he received the news that his wife was to bear him another child. And the conception at the time of a full moon, a diet of imported Thracian figs, sweet chestnuts and almond milk, and the shape of her already swelling belly guaranteed a son. At last!
Agricola smiled, as the smoke of the burnt flesh on its brazier curled up into the sky. He was in control again, as confident as he had been when he first set out to attack the Novantae. Since then, he’d allowed himself to fall into the sin of fear far too often. He would endeavour to rid himself of such a weakness from now on.
Slowly, he left the gates of the temple, unlacing his leather breastplate and handing it to a slave. It was time for the bathhouse now, followed by food.
The air held the barest hint of crispness, for the cold season came earlier every year here in the north. Still, if the victories kept coming now, he would be bathed in the sun of his own land perhaps sooner than he originally hoped.
With a spring in his step Agricola nodded at his door guard and entered the outer chamber of his quarters. There he stopped to sniff the rich scent of beef stew and malted ale, letting his eyes adjust to a darkness relieved only by two lamps and the single window set high in the wall, covered with thin, oiled hide.
It was only as Agricola’s sight cleared that he realized he wasn’t alone. A man was seated in one of his rush chairs, with his head in his hands. A suspicious dread breathed over Agricola, with a chill greater than the Alban air outside.
Then the man raised his face and Agricola had to stop himself from stepping back, with an instinct to ward away what was coming.
It was Lucius.
The optio in command of the small ridge fort tilted the gate to shield himself from the cold wind. On either side of him, six legionaries stood with their swords drawn, and above on the rampart more soldiers had their spears trained on the intruder, though the person was not only alone, but also a woman.
She stood, a shivering, dark shadow against the vivid bracken and birches lining the slope behind her. Their leaves were already beginning to turn, yet the optio knew, after three seasons in Alba, that the flame of autumn colour licking over the land was a trick for foreigners such as he, for it heralded the most bitter cold. He hated the wind in particular, which was why being drawn away from his warm brazier and his dice to deal with this sudden arrival had put him in a brutal mood.
The optio peered at the woman. Beneath her shapeless, brown tunic, dirt-streaked cheeks and lank, black hair, he could now glimpse a hint of beauty, and he wondered, with a stab of warmth, whether her body matched the fineness of her eyes, vacant as they were.
‘I must see your commander, Agricola,’ she repeated, as she had for his scouts, and then for the men on watch. The woman’s words and demeanour had only added to the enigma she presented. She spoke faultless Latin, yet though her words were authoritative, her voice was colourless, and she hunched into her tattered cloak and would not meet his eyes.
‘And what might you be wanting with him, sweetheart?’ the optio mocked, peevish with cold. The soldier beside him laughed and, boldened, the commander stepped closer to the woman. She reeked of unwashed flesh and damp wool.
‘That is for him to decide.’
Her head was down now, her cheek turned away, and on impulse the optio took hold of her jaw and turned her face up to his. Even in the shadow of the fort palisade, the combined beauty of the woman’s skin and exotic features was unmistakable. ‘You’re a pretty one to be wandering these border lands all alone, without the protection of men.’
The woman shrugged, her large, dark eyes drifting past him to gaze at the sky. They were most unusual, those eyes – almond-shaped, the edges slanted – and something about their languid cast made the warmth pulse in the optio’s groin. ‘I am the queen of the Votadini,’ the woman murmured, ‘and I am under Agricola’s protection. I need no more.’
At this ludicrous claim, the guards on the rampart above the gate guffawed, resting on their spears to gain a better view.
‘Queen, eh?’ the optio jeered, tilting her chin higher. The cold sun glinted on the fine, downy hairs on her smooth skin. He dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘You might need to peel off those rags and show me how much of a queen you really are, pretty maid. Dance under me with some royal flair and I might believe you.’
No flicker of emotion passed across those black eyes, only the reflection of the clouds. ‘Will it make you take me to Agricola quicker?’
The optio was confused, his desire rapidly cooling. Alban women were known for their fight – that’s what made them so alluring – but the dullness of this one’s voice only made the hairs on his neck rise.
‘If you please me,’ he muttered, releasing her jaw. With a breath he pushed his disquiet away, for he was a practical man at heart. Mars knew when he’d have the opportunity to bed anything female, let alone some flesh as fine as this.
The woman shrugged again, uncaring, and pulled the ragged edges of her woollen cloak over her breasts, her hands t
rembling with cold.
‘Come, I will question you in my quarters,’ he announced loudly, for the benefit of his men, and made to lead her towards one of the two long timber barracks. She did not even try to avoid the mud puddles in the rutted track, but plodded along behind him listlessly. ‘You’d best tell me everything you know, and quickly,’ he ordered, swallowing down his unease.
A week later, Agricola had been able to hold to his self-made promise about resisting fear.
It was easy, of course, in the face of the rage that overwhelmed him as he heard Lucius’s tale of woe, a rage that was given a final, painful twist with Lucius’s stuttering recitation of the numbers of Roman dead.
Another 1,500 men. Agricola was still struggling to believe it.
And then suddenly Samana had returned, scratched, thin and dirty; alive only because she gained food from those people who had not yet learned of her banishment. Amid his anger, Agricola had marvelled with a kind of disbelieving horror how these Albans, so obsessed with royal blood, could turn on a noble so resolutely that the order would be followed by every man, woman and child in the land.
Of course, his fury had little to do with empathy for Samana herself. What truly burned in his gut was the arrogance of the Erin prince, snatching a party of Agricola’s allies under the nose of a legion, and the careless swagger with which he had dealt with Samana, blatantly defying both the threat of the Roman forces and Agricola’s personal wrath.
Samana had assured Agricola that the raid on the sacred island would destroy much of the tribes’ resistance, but resist they still did.
