On Hadrian's Secret Service

by Gavin Chappell

  The troop had not been his first active command. He had been with the legions for three years now, as a tribune of auxiliary horse now attached to the Ninth (Spanish) Legion, and had certainly seen action before, but only in line of battle, supporting the legions themselves. And this first time when he had been in full command, even of a small troop on a diplomatic mission, he had failed utterly. His men had been cut down one by one when the Selgovae and their Caledonian allies had attacked, and it had only been the timely intervention of these Brigantian warriors that had saved his own hide. All but one of the Frisians who he had commanded had died in their own blood.

  It had been too far to return to Eboracum as they were, and with the countryside in ferment. The warrior woman Drustica had agreed to take him back to her home in Luguvalium[6], in the territory of the Carvetti, a sept of the main Brigantian confederation. But it was a long journey over the moors. The weather had turned from bad to worse, and now the rain was falling slantwise along the glen as the wind drove it. He knotted his woollen scarf more securely round his neck and sat his horse despondently.

  The Carvettian riders, mounted on their small, shaggy ponies, peered out from the eaves of the wood at the lowering sky and the lashing rain. Grunting discontentedly, they took out more of the bannocks of oatmeal they seemed to live on—one had almost broken Flaminius’ teeth when he tried it earlier—and ate now that they had the chance. Flaminius himself rooted in his saddle bags for the last of his Roman rations, stale spelt bread, which he gnawed at distastefully. How fondly he remembered the wine he had guzzled and the oysters he had bolted in the officers’ mess just before he departed on patrol!

  He had certainly not expected that it would end the way it had done. They had been a long way into Brigantian territory when it had happened, too, and a long way from the nearest Roman camps. How had the Selgovae known where he would be? Or had it been a lucky guess?

  It had definitely been a Caledonian leading them, Flaminius knew, and that fact was ominous. It suggested that this local trouble was a rather bigger matter. If the Caledonians were stoking the fires of war, this could be the beginning of something much more serious than a squabble between two minor border tribes.

  ‘Why did the Selgovae attack us?’ asked Hrodmar, the surviving Frisian auxiliary, picking his teeth as he trotted over to join him. He spoke Latin with so thick a Germanic accent Flaminius often had difficulty understanding him. It was a shame the decurion hadn’t survived, his Latin had been almost perfect.

  ‘I think,’ Flaminius said meditatively, ‘that these raids on their lands are something more than a fresh bout of old enmities. I think that our involvement, Roman involvement, is what someone has been hoping for.’

  ‘Surely the man I fought with at first was no Selgovian?’ Hrodmar asked shrewdly. ‘He was bigger, rangier, with red hair.’

  Flaminius nodded. ‘He was a Caledonian,’ he said. ‘The Brigantians say they’re not at feud with the Caledonians. Only with the Selgovae, who drive off their cattle and drag their women and children into slavery, as they have done since the beginning of time.’

  Much as their own people have done in reprisal since the beginning of time, Flaminius wanted to add, but one of the Carvettians might hear—they all spoke Latin after a fashion, some with a better accent than Hrodmar. He was officially on a diplomatic mission, and did not want to add another disaster to the list. Besides the little Frisian trooper, these uncouth barbarians were the only friends he had in this howling, rain lashed wilderness.

  He hunched over, drawing the hood of his cloak to cover his bare head from the water that dripped down from the writhing branches. The Carvettians sat their ponies in silence as the rain hissed down beyond the grove. Flaminius had lost his helmet in the fight, it lay amidst the heather several days’ journey away. He remembered how, three years ago, he had received a stern reprimand from the camp prefect at Eboracum for mislaying his helmet on his first day. The humiliation had engraved itself into his brain like an inscription on marble. Yet here he was, seeing action in the raw, and already his helmet was gone. And that was not the worst of it.

  His right hand drifted down to his empty sheath, fingers twitching as they failed to close round the comforting worn hilt of his missing sword. Without a helmet, he was at a disadvantage. Without a sword, he was in serious trouble indeed.

  It had been knocked from his hand by the wild swing of that Caledonian redhead who had led the Selgovae in the attack. Shortly afterwards, Drustica and her Carvettians had galloped to the rescue, and urged Hrodmar and himself to ride into the trees. Flaminius had wanted to stop and retrieve his sword from the heather where it lay, but his explanations had gone unheard in the confusion, and before he knew anything they were riding for Carvetti territory.

  ‘Epona’s teats, why don’t we turn back and return to the fort?’ Hrodmar found it difficult to remain quiet. Flaminius had already reprimanded the little auxiliary for his garrulousness but to no avail. ‘Why are we going further and further into this unsettled country?’

  ‘We’re going to stay with our allies, the Carvetti,’ Flaminius began.

  ‘I thought they were Brigantians!’ the Frisian complained, interrupting.

  ‘The Carvetti are a sept of the Brigantian confederation,’ Flaminius lectured him, parroting the legate of the Ninth Legion. ‘A sub tribe. And they are going to protect us. They say that under current conditions there’s no way we could make it back to Eboracum alive, so we’ll take shelter in their village until things get quieter, then ride back and make our report. Now hush!’

  ‘Are the Selgovae following us?’ asked the irrepressible Frisian.

  Flaminius sighed. ‘Maybe, trooper,’ he said. ‘It certainly seems to be the case. According to our allies they may well be on our trail. We’re waiting to see if they appear. That’s why we’re hiding in this grove—in silence!’

  Hrodmar took the hint and stopped talking.

  Dolefully Flaminius stared out at the trail, waiting for any sign of pursuit. He was tall, seemingly little more than a lanky young man. The rain plastered his hair to his helmetless head, but under happier conditions it was thick and curly. His piercing eyes were as black as olives but his broad, pleasantly ugly face was paler than it had been back home. Not surprising, after three winters spent in this most northerly province of the empire.

  Beyond the beeches was a slope that, when it could be seen through the curtains of rain that intermittently concealed it, was purple with heather and yellow with gorse, and orange brown with bracken. The trail led alongside a ridge, at the bottom of which lurked a small, dank bog whose waters danced with the lashing rain and the soughing wind. The sun was invisible, glimmering feebly high above through dark banks of clouds. It looked as if the country had never been tamed.

  That impression was reinforced when he turned in his saddle to consider the wild semi-barbarians who were his allies and his saviours. He hadn’t seen a Roman citizen in several days. Even Hrodmar, though as foreign to these dank surroundings as himself, was a wild man from beyond the limits of civilisation.

  As an auxiliary, the little Frisian would be granted Roman citizenship after surviving twenty five years of service, but right now that eventuality seemed unlikely. Flaminius wasn’t entirely sure how many years Hrodmar had already served as an auxiliary, but he had a terrible feeling that the Frisian’s time was up—and so was his own, after only three years. So unfair.

  Hrodmar was as alien to these surroundings as was Flaminius himself. He was stocky and pale, with long fair hair and hawkish blue eyes, and rode a purebred stallion, while the Carvettians who sat their ponies across the clearing were for the most part tall, gangling and blond—although in some cases this was the result of the lime wash these barbarians applied to their hair—with eyes as grey as the skies above. The shaggy coated ponies they rode were miserable beasts compared with Hrodmar’s highly strung mount.

  Hrodmar, like Flaminius, wore a cuirass of mail, and had retained his
Roman auxiliary helmet, although he nursed it under his heavy cloak to protect the plumes from the dripping rain. His cavalry longsword was longer and slimmer than the legionary sword or even the British sword Flaminius had seen wielded to effect by Drustica, the mysterious warrior woman who spearheaded this small troop. The rest carried lances, though they were a far cry from the leaf bladed weapon Hrodmar still bore.

  ‘Still no sign of any pursuers,’ the Frisian commented, uneasy with the silence, although now he had the decency to whisper. ‘Do you really think those Selgovians are tracking us?’

  Flaminius nodded.

  ‘The reports say that the Selgovae are expert hunters and trackers, whether or deer or of humans beings. We escaped them, but they won’t let us get away. They’ll follow us and follow us until the end. Our only hope is either to seek shelter—and the Carvetti village is still some days off—or to ambush them.’

  ‘How will you fight them when you don’t have a sword anymore?’ Hrodmar asked after a brief silence.

  Flaminius snarled at the man. ‘Give me your own weapon, then!’ he said impatiently. Hrodmar had a point, in more ways than one. ‘You still have your lance.’

  Hrodmar grunted, and reluctantly unbelted his longsword, then handed it over. Flaminius strapped it on and rested his hands on the new belt. The weight of the sword was comforting.

  Hrodmar returned his attention to the track beyond the dripping eaves. ‘No sign of pursuit yet,’ he said. ‘Are you sure they’re on our trail? I say we should get back to the road and ride in haste to Eboracum or the nearest outpost.’

  Flaminius tugged at his nose. ‘Maybe,’ he conceded. ‘There’s been no sign of them, except once during that dry spell yesterday one of the Carvettians thought he saw the sun on armour miles back up the trail. I told Drustica that our presence was only going to cause problems for her, that she should let us ride back, but she told me that she had sworn to bring us back to her village and would not let us out of her protection.’ The warrior woman was a difficult person to refuse. ‘A Caledonian warrior riding with our enemies is worrying, but I shouldn’t think that he would want to provoke a fight with Rome. They don’t want war on the frontier any more than we do, surely. Our strength in Britain’s limited. And despite their support from the northern tribes like the Selgovae, so is theirs. War is something to be avoided at all costs.’

  ‘Epona’s teats! Cowardice,’ Hrodmar growled. ‘We should ride in there and wipe them out.’

  ‘You and whose legion?’ Flaminius was sardonic. ‘I tell you, we don’t have the numbers to counter another rising of the tribes.’

  Hrodmar grunted again, despondent.

  ‘It’s the waiting I can’t stand,’ he admitted. ‘I never could, not even in the old days before I became a Roman auxiliary. We would wait in the dark forest night for a merchants’ caravan to pass, then ride down and surround it. When we were fighting, I was happy—until the legions defeated us and we were given the choice of joining up or becoming slaves… But the waiting, in the cold of the forest night, was torture. Here it’s even worse.’

  Flaminius looked away. He had known little about the auxiliary’s background, simply that he was a Frisian. He knew that it was military policy to field auxiliary units as far from their own lands as possible, to lessen the chances of them joining the enemy. In Frisian lands Hrodmar would forever have that temptation, but here, his loyalty would be to Rome, which provided pay and clothing and a decent roof over his head, and most of all, a chance to become a Roman citizen if he survived his years of service, and for his children to grow up as inhabitants of the greatest empire the world had ever known.

  He sneered cynically at the thought. The Frisian would have been better off staying in the forests and marshes of his home. Flaminius himself should have remained on his parents’ little farm in Latium, where the Apennines glimmered bluely on the horizon and the scent of the olive groves filled the lazy summer air. He shivered with cold, then looked up when he heard a low cry from one of the scouts posted on the edge of the wood.

  ‘They’re coming,’ the man hissed, urging his pony to trot down to join the others. ‘They’re coming! The Selgovae!’

  Drustica rode up. Her cold, beautiful face was set, her faded war paint seemed to shine with new vigour. Her unconfined fair hair hung in rats’ tails about her face as she loaded a sling with a clay ball.

  ‘Where are they?’ she hissed, and added, without waiting for an answer, ‘Get to your positions, men.’

  As the Carvettians dismounted and readied their spears and shields, Hrodmar turned to Flaminius. ‘The hunters! The Selgovians!’ he cried. ‘They’re here.’

  But Flaminius had already seen them.

  Coming down the trail from the brow of the adjacent hill was a group of riders. Like the Carvettians, the Selgovians were mounted on small, shaggy ponies that trotted wearily down the muddy path, hoofs splashing through the puddles as they passed between the banks of heather. There were several warriors clad in blue and white chequered breeches and blue or green tunics, over which some wore mailcoats. Several also had helmets, fantastically wrought affairs of wings and horns, totally unsuited, to Flaminius’ mind, for the fight. The rest went bare headed and their lime washed hair was arranged in elaborate crests. Two carried brazen shields that glimmered dimly in the grey light. All carried spears and lances.

  Abruptly, Flaminius’ mouth went dry while his bladder seemed full to bursting. He remembered the sudden ambush, how the Selgovians had leapt down upon the auxiliaries, their knives glittering as blood spouted from slit throats. He remembered the tall, imposing Caledonian who had led them, a terrifying warrior. Flaminius scanned the line for that rangy red headed form, but there was no sign. Where had he got to? His absence was more worrying than his presence.

  Still the Selgovians rode down into the wooded glen. At times they would vanish behind groves of gnarled, moss grown trees, only to swim into view again further down the rain lashed slope.

  Flaminius realised that Drustica sat her pony beside him, watching the approaching foe just as he was. Her blue war paint made her seem as savage as any of the Selgovians. Though slender, her armoured form promised immense strength and power.

  ‘Gaius,’ she murmured. ‘They will pass us soon. Are you ready? We must slaughter them!’

  ‘If we do,’ the tribune whispered, ‘then I will have to leave you, and take the news back to my legion.’

  She glanced at him, and to his surprise he saw that this troubled her. Her face hardened, seeing him looking at her, and she gave a curt nod. ‘You will ride back to your Roman masters and muster them to join us on the field of battle,’ she stated.

  Flaminius gave her a grimace of regret and began to explain just why that was impossible, but before he could finish she turned away and gestured silently to her warriors to come closer to the edge of the grove. Flaminius saw that the Selgovian riders had now reached the narrow glen bottom and were riding alongside the burn. As he watched, the trail led them across the beer brown waters at a ford of flat stones and the next thing he knew they were crossing the emerald green turf—directly towards the gnarled grove where the Carvettians lay in wait.

  He gripped the longsword that he had requisitioned from Hrodmar, and wondered what use it would be. The Carvettians all had javelins or slings at the ready. It was clear that the ambush would work best through surprise. They would kill as many as possible with their missiles.

  Drustica saw his uncertainty. ‘When the volley is over,’ she said in a matter of fact tone, ‘we will ride out and butcher the survivors.’

  She was nothing like the Roman ladies Flaminius had been accustomed to back home. Very unlike. More vicious but also more vivacious, in her own barbarous, woad painted way.

  ‘Now!’ Drustica whirled her sling round and round her head, then flung the deadly clay missile.

  As she did, the rest of the Carvettians pelted the passing Selgovians with slingshot and javelins. The warriors were caught
off guard. Flaminius saw several men topple from their steeds in the first instant, skulls staved in with slingshot or with javelins jutting from their chests.

  The survivors rallied round their leader, another man of their tribe, who was searching the wall of trees for their attackers. His eyes met Flaminius’ through the curtain of leaves. Then he lifted his hand and pointed—and a sling stone hit him in the forehead, knocking him backwards over his pony’s crupper. Drustica reloaded her sling and offered Flaminius a savage grin.

  But now the rest of the Selgovians had located their attackers and they were galloping towards the trees. At once Drustica shouted something in the British language and kicked her own pony into a gallop, leading the others straight out into the open. Flaminius and Hrodmar rode along with the rest, the Frisian levelling his lance, Flaminius brandishing his borrowed longsword.

  The two lines met in the middle of the green sward, churning up the mossy turf with their ponies’ hoofs. Flaminius found himself faced by two Selgovians, who lunged at him with their long lances. Desperately, he lashed out with his sword and succeeded in deflecting one probing spearhead, but the second darted like lightning and thumped into his mail clad chest. He sprawled backwards on his horse, his sternum hurting and bruised from the blow, although his mail clad breast had not been pierced by the wicked spearhead.

  Another Selgovian warrior charged right at him, standing up on his pony’s back, whirling a sling. Flaminius ducked at the last moment as the sling stone whistled towards him, then used his position to aim a cut at the man’s exposed hamstrings as his pony took him thundering past. Wailing loud enough to be heard over the noise of the fight, the Selgovian warrior fell forward over his pony to hit the turf. He sprawled there, twitching feebly, and seconds later, another Selgovian inadvertently rode his pony over his head.