In the Shadow of the Wall

by Gordon Anthony

  He stood among the crowd of warriors savouring the applause from the assembled villagers, trying to see whether Mairead was watching him, but at the same time trying not to appear as if he was looking for her. Instead he saw his mother kissing his father farewell and he joined in the chorus of cheers that greeted the gesture. Brude’s father was the head man of the village, a wealthy man who owned nearly twenty head of cattle. Now, dressed in his bronze breastplate which gleamed like gold in the summer sun and carrying a mighty sword at his waist, he was about to lead his twenty-eight warriors on the greatest adventure of their lifetime.

  Nechtan himself had come all the way from his fortress in the hills, bringing a huge army of over ninety warriors. Nechtan, acknowledged among the Boresti as the mightiest warlord of the tribe, had called the leaders of all the villages to set aside their squabbles and join him in the march south. For the news had reached them that the Romans had sailed away, across the sea, leaving only a handful of soldiers to guard their province. The time was ripe for the tribes of the Pritani to go south to plunder the wealth of the undefended towns. Nechtan, sitting astride his horse, had told them that the men of the Venicones, the Damnonii and the Selgovae would join them in the greatest army the Pritani had mustered in nearly twenty years.

  Brude felt proud to be a part of such a great adventure. He and Colm had talked of little else in the past days. They had practised with their spears and shields, copying the older warriors, the battle-scarred men who plastered their hair with lime to shape it like the mane of an angry horse. The two boys had dreamed of the deeds they would accomplish and the Romans they would kill.

  Now Colm stood beside Brude, grinning broadly as he waved to someone in the crowd. Brude followed his gaze and saw Mairead, standing in the shadow of the great broch, a garland of flowers in her long hair. She gave them a smile and Brude smiled back. Colm frowned when he saw Mairead was looking more at Brude than at him.

  Mairead was a couple of years younger than the two boys but they had grown up together. Colm was two months older than Brude and liked to take the lead in most things that they did together, which was just about everything. Though they were like brothers, Brude, as the younger, usually let Colm have his own way. He knew that Colm, who had lost his parents when he was quite young, liked to prove he was better than everyone else. He always wanted to win at rything he did. Most of the time Brude did not mind that. Colm was taller than he was by half a head but Brude was stockier and stronger. Despite that, he usually let Colm win when they wrestled. Usually, but not always.

  Mairead, by common consent, was the most beautiful girl in the village. She had reached the age where she should marry. Everyone seemed to take it for granted that she would marry Colm before long which meant he would be the next head man, for Mairead was the daughter of Brude’s grandmother’s cousin. The Boresti, like all the Pritani, inherited through the female line. Only men could rule, of course, but even though Brude was the son of a head man, his mother was not of a noble line, so he would not follow his father in that position. It did not bother him. He was young, strong and happy, and he was off to war to become a hero. What more was there to wish for?

  They gathered on the wide, open space north of the broch. Its mighty tower, the height of twelve grown men, dwarfed them all, casting a long shadow in the morning sunlight. It was the wonder of the coast, built by Brude’s great-great-grandfather after the Romans had come and gone many years before, built to offer protection for the villagers should the Romans ever return. They never had, so the broch had never been needed as a defence. Its two concentric walls, each as thick as a man is tall, formed an impregnable fortress, providing a safe haven for people and animals alike. With only one small entrance and a platform at the high summit from which defenders could hurl rocks and spears at any enemy, the broch was a symbol of the power of the Boresti. The village of Broch Tava had grown and flourished in recent years. Brude’s father was accounted a good leader, for the people prospered under his rule. He was not the mightiest lord of the Boresti but he was the only one who had a broch to defend his people and the whole village took pride in that fact.

  Now Nechtan, the mighty warrior, lord of lords, led them in a prayer to Belatucadros, god of war, seeking his blessing on their venture. Then he drank from a horn full of ale, tossing it loftily aside when he had drained it. They all cheered as he waved his arm, urging his horse to turn and set off westwards.

  The army followed, accompanied for some way by the villagers. Colm ran to Mairead and gave her a kiss, waving happily to her as he rejoined Brude in the marching troop. “I’m going to marry her when we get back,” Colm told him. Mairead’s father, Fionnlagh, who was marching a few paces ahead of them, turned to give Colm a studied look before glancing at Brude.

  Brude looked away, turning his head in time to see Mairead blow him a kiss. He grinned at her like an idiot and tried to blow a kiss back, but couldn’t because he was holding a spear in his right hand and had a shield strapped to his left arm, so all he succeeded in doing was knocking the spear against his head. Colm laughed at him but Brude did not mind for he had a secret. He knew that Mairead would not marry Colm. She had told him so last night when she had given herself to him. Brude knew that she was waiting for him to return, not for Colm. Brude knew that his friend would not be happy, but that was a problem for another day. Today they were marching to war and he was a real man with a woman waiting for him to return a victorious hero.

  They marched inland, skirting the flat-topped slopes of the hill they called the Law before heading out to the wide plain which lay between the shining Tava away to their left and the hills to their right. Some distance inland to their right was the old hill fort where their ancestors had once lived but the place had been long abandoned, unused since the Romans first came and drove the Boresti from it.

  The plain was fertile land, heavily wooded but dotted with small farmsteads and cleared fields. Every few miles another man would come to join the march, leaving his family behind to tend the land and the livestock. There were some women in the army too, their cheeks decorated with swirling painted designs, armed like the men with shield and spear, just as eager to fight. Brude somehow felt more intimidated by the women than the men. He remembered asking his father once why some women went to war with the men. His father had laughed and told him that it was to stop the men running away. “No man wants to appear a coward in front of the women,” he had said. Then he had added, “And some of them are bonny fighters as well.” Brude could well believe it.

  It took them two days to reach Peart, where they could cross the river. Here the Tava was narrow and fast, but fordable in some places. The people of Peart under their head man, who was called Gartnait, had even built a wooden bridge so the army could cross without getting their feet wet.

  Peart was a large settlement, nestled around the river in a valley between hills and cliffs. There was great rivalry between Gartnait and Brude’s father but Nechtan called them together, telling them to put aside their quarrels, so they publicly embraced, then drank some ale together.

  That night there was a great feast. The cattle raids were joked about and nobody came to blows, so keen were they all to join the war. They had stormed across the northern wall in the year Brude was born. Nechtan, Gartnait and Brude’s father had been young men when they had joined that last great raid. As the ale and uisge flowed, they told of how the Romans had run before them and how they had freed the Selgovae from the yoke of the invader. Brude listened to the tales avidly though he remembered his father boasting of these exploits once before. He recalled his mother whispering to him that in truth the Romans had all gone south long before the Boresti had crossed the wall. Brude did not mind. The stories were good, some of them funny once he had some ale inside him, and boasting was the warrior’s way. One day soon he would have stories of his own to boast about.

  Colm and Brude got very drunk. They slept in the open, only waking when Brude’s father kicked them to the
ir feet and told them to get moving. Hung over and thirsty, they staggered after the army, most f who were not in much better shape. Men and women dropped out regularly to throw up before hauling themselves to their feet again and rejoining the march. Brude had never felt so ill in all his young life but somehow he kept walking. By mid-morning Colm announced that he could no longer carry his shield, so Brude picked it up, strapped it to his own back and carried it along with his own weapons.

  The army’s march was so strung out and disorganised that Nechtan called a halt by mid-afternoon when they reached a small stream that meandered through a wide valley. Most of them simply collapsed and lay where they fell. A few hardy souls got fires going so that they could cook some broth and some meat but there was barely enough to go round, so many of them went hungry. Brude’s father, himself looking a little the worse for the excesses of the previous evening, managed to get some meat for the two boys. He sat with them while they ate. “Did you find yourselves some women last night?” he asked.

  Brude felt embarrassed and simply shook his head while Colm confessed they had been too busy drinking. Brude’s father laughed at them. “Next time, don’t waste the chance.”

  The march continued, the army straggling in a long, winding column over the hills and through the valleys. There were few settlements here but a handful of men of the Venicones joined the march, eager to take part in the plundering.

  Four days out from Peart they reached the remains of the old Roman defensive lines. Brude marvelled at the height of the turf wall and the carvings on the broken stones that had once lined its foot. In some places the wooden palisade, although mostly rotted away, was still partly visible. Now, it provided some ready-made firewood for them.

  Clustered round their fires for the evening, the boys listened to the tales of the Romans. Some of the older men said they could remember when the Romans had built this wall. They insisted that it stretched from one side of the country to the other. Brude thought that was unlikely. He knew how the storytellers liked to exaggerate. Nobody could build a wall that long, he thought, but he held his peace, even when someone said that the next wall was even longer, even higher and made of stone.

  “Do you think that’s true?” Colm asked him that night as they lay down to sleep. “About the wall, I mean?”

  “What? That it’s made of stone and stretches right across the country? I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “It can’t be true,” Colm said fervently.

  Brude said nothing. As a child he had always been told he asked too many questions, always trying to understand how things worked or why things happened. Often the answers did not satisfim. It was only now that he was older, no longer a child, that he was starting to understand that his father and the other older men did not know everything. He wanted to ask someone about the wall of stone but he knew none of the men of the Boresti had ever seen it and he did not know any of the men from the other tribes well enough to know whether they would answer him truthfully. He decided he would have to wait until he saw it for himself.

  On they marched, soon entering the lands of the Damnonii where Nechtan warned them all not to steal anything or otherwise harm the inhabitants, for the Damnonii were going to join them. They saw little sign of them though and the never-ending march continued as it had before. Brude’s feet were aching from the constant walking and the soles of his shoes were starting to fall away. He felt exhausted yet at the same time fitter than he had ever felt before. He was pleased that he was able to keep up the pace better than most. Still, walking barefoot would slow him considerably so he scrounged some goat’s hide from a farmstead they passed and fashioned a crude pair of new shoes, which were uncomfortable and gave him blisters.

  The hills grew steeper and higher as they continued southwards. Now their column was joined by warriors from the Damnonii and soon they were greeted by the people of the Selgovae as well, until Brude could not count how many were in the army. His father told him he reckoned there must be over five hundred men altogether. What chance did the Romans have against such a host?

  They made their way through the deep, dark forests of the Selgovae, always keeping away from the eastern coast now, for that was the land of the Votadini who were known to be friendly to the Romans. Colm derided them for that. “How can any of the Pritani befriend the Romans?” he asked aloud.

  “It is difficult for us to understand,” Brude’s father conceded, “but when the Romans are living just beyond the next hill, perhaps it is as well not to upset them too much.”

  Brude and Colm both looked at the southern hill as if expecting to see Romans cresting the summit. Brude’s father laughed aloud. “I didn’t mean that hill,” he chuckled.

  Nor the hill after that, nor the one after that either, as it turned out. The march went on. The deeply wooded slopes slowed their progress but there was, at least, plenty to eat, for the forest was full of game and the Selgovae were good hunters. They ate well, enjoying the slower pace which allowed their aching muscles to recover slightly. Brude lost count of how many days they had been walking, but he knew it was past midsummer now. When the forest at last came to an end, they marched across open hillsides, crossed bracken-covered moors and valleys, splashing across streams and shallow rivers.

  To Brude’s surprise, they stopped early one afternoon. Then the word filtered back that they were to rest, eat and sleep for the wall was less than three hours’ march away. “We’ll set off at nightfall” said Brude’s father to the men of Broch Tava. “Stick together.” He looked hard at Brude and Colm. “And you two youngsters stay close to me.”

  At this time of year there would only be around six hours of darkness so they had a long wait ahead of them. The men of Broch Tava sat together, or lay on the ground, resting against rocks. Some of them lit a cooking fire but there was not a lot of food left, so the best they could do was produce a thin broth.

  There was a quiet tension in the air. Fionnlagh told them that the Selgovae had warned that the Romans often sent patrols out north of the wall so they had to lie low. “We’ve got scouts out watching for them, but it’s best not to make too much noise or too much smoke from cooking fires,” he warned them.

  Brude felt his stomach churning. Even though he was tired after the days of marching, he was unable to sleep. He decided to go for a walk to see what the other tribes were doing. Colm was lying on his back with his eyes closed so Brude left him in peace. Much as he loved Colm like a brother, he knew their friendship would be unlikely to survive when they returned home and Mairead married him instead of Colm. He did not want to hurt his friend but could see no alternative. He decided that, once they were on the way home with their plunder, he would speak to his father about what to do.

  He wandered along the banks of a small stream where he found a group of men and women from the Selgovae cutting down some trees and stripping the trunks to leave only the stumps of larger branches. He watched, fascinated, for a few moments, then asked one of them what they were doing.

  The man laughed at his ignorance. “Making ladders to climb the Wall,” he said. “You stick the trunk against the Wall and climb using the stumps of the branches.”

  Brude looked at the three crude ladders the Selgovae had already made. One of them was the length of four men and the others were not much shorter. He was about to ask why they had made them so long but decided he did not want them to laugh at him again, so he wandered back to where the men from Broch Tava were resting. He told his father what he had seen but the older man was not impressed. “We can climb the wall with our bare hands, I’m sure,” he said dismissively. “Like when I caught you and Colm trying to climb the broch when you were boys.”

  “The Selgovae seem to know what they are doing,” persisted Brude.

  “Oh, I dare say they’ll be able to climb quicker with their ladders,” his father conceded grudgingly, “but we’ll manage fine without them.”

  Brude was not convinced, but he knew not to argue otherwise he
would be told that his father was older, wiser, ore experienced than he was, so he said no more. He recalled the northern wall that the Romans had abandoned and how impressive it had been even though it was little more than earth and turf. He worried that a wall of stone might be even more formidable but he supposed that his father was probably right; stone walls had plenty of gaps for finger and toe holds so they would be able to climb it no matter how high it was. And it was unlikely that there would be any Romans trying to stop them, because who would stand to face such a huge force? He reasoned that the Romans had already shown they could not face the Pritani otherwise why would they have abandoned their northern wall? The Romans, Brude decided, must be very frightened of them if they cowered behind stone walls. He felt a lot better now, even managing to snooze for a couple of hours in the warmth of the fading sun.

  By nightfall they were all on their feet, weapons checked and eager to go. The moon, almost full, was rising, casting its baleful light over the rugged terrain they had to cross. Nechtan made a short speech, encouraging them to stick together so that they could share in the spoils. He told them that beyond the wall were rich pickings from undefended farms and villages. He said that he was sure the Boresti would show the other tribes how to carry out a real raid. He promised them gold, cattle and women and they cheered him loudly, spears held aloft.

  Brude’s father led the men of Broch Tava on the night march, which, despite the pale light from the moon, soon turned into a difficult and dangerous journey. The ground was uneven and treacherous. In the dark they could not see where they were treading, so men would stumble, cursing, or twist their ankles in hidden rabbit holes. The approach to the wall was supposed to take only three hours but the sky was already growing lighter and the birds were chirping to greet the dawn by the time the army ground to a halt at the foot of a dark slope, which appeared to Brude to be no different from the many others they had climbed during the night.