The Legions of the Mist

by The Legions of the Mist (retail) (epub)

  * * *

  He never liked Eburacum any better, or the Hispana either, for that matter, but his transfer applications were routinely turned down with the comment that he was needed at present – the centurion could feel free to reapply next month. Meanwhile he tackled the appalling project of working the Eighth Cohort into shape, and did his bit to mend the walls of Eburacum. And slowly he grew grudgingly used to the place, as he grew to be friends with Licinius. They hunted together when they were off duty, in the woods to the west or the purple heather hills that rolled like an ocean to the northward; or wandered into the cluster of buildings that made up Eburacum town, to drink in one of the wine stalls or poke about in the shops selling perfume and rubbing oil, hunting spears, jewelry, hides, and bright native weaving. Licinius found endless fascination in the shops of the potion peddlers although, as he told Justin, he suspected that most of their panaceas were compounded mainly of hope and goose grease.

  And the surgeon served as balm to Justin’s mood. ‘Keep your temper,’ Licinius advised him once when Justin had complained that the wall repairs – they were replacing the old and rotten wood with stone – ought to have been made long ago. ‘Some was done six or eight years back, I think. I wasn’t here myself then. But after that it was let slide again. Mithras, don’t you think I know how it is? I’ve complained til I’m hoarse and all it’s got me is young fools like Favonius being so gay and amusing about the whole thing that I want to knock their heads in. They think they’re playing some kind of game. They’re all such little Roman gentlemen. A pity they haven’t more brains.’

  It was a late afternoon in the first days of winter, and they were sprawled in a clearing westward of the fort, their hunting spears on the ground beside them with a bundled wolf skin, the product of the day’s hunting. They were finishing the last of a meal of mutton and barley bannock, tossing a piece now and then to Whitepaw, Licinius’s hunting dog, who was flopped contentedly at their feet. They were almost within sight of Eburacum, and their guide, one of the local tribesmen who supplemented his income in this fashion, had parted from them a short distance back.

  ‘Licinius, the Ninth wasn’t always like this,’ Justin said, cleaning his dagger, with which he had been slicing mutton. ‘Hades, it has enough wreaths of honor to satisfy an Emperor. What happened to it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s been too long from Rome. The Ninth came over here with Claudius, you know. Or maybe it never recovered from Boudicca’s rebellion. Rebuilt legions tend to think themselves unlucky. It almost happened again in Domitian’s reign – the Picts had the whole damn Legion surrounded, and Agricola’s reinforcements only just pulled their asses out of the fire in time. Or maybe it was the few years of peace after Agricola’s campaign that did it. Nobody really thought of Britain as a threat, and they recalled Agricola, and the Legion was allowed to get soft. I don’t know. The Second Adiutrix was withdrawn then too, and that was a mistake. For years now we’ve been marching out to put down one small tribal rising after another, piecemeal. And the minute we turn our backs, it flares up again, or another one does. There was a bad one ten years ago, the last time we pulled back in the north. The younger officers, and some old enough to know better, regard it as a sort of game, but this ineffectual dodging about and striking here and there wears the men’s nerves down.’ Licinius shifted one leg to a more comfortable angle and regarded it with disgust. ‘Now you’ve got me doing it, curse you, and I’m in even less of a position than you are to change anything. I suppose I’m lucky. If it hadn’t been for a bad knee, I’d have gone into the Centuriate, and then I’d be more frustrated than ever. Well, I’m like to have plenty on my hands with my own craft soon enough.’

  Justin sat up straight, putting his dagger away. ‘Trouble?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m only the surgeon here. My job is to put men back together, not take them apart. But the tribes are stirring all along the frontier, especially the Brigantes, and we’re sitting right smack in the middle of their territory. From what Cunory the Hunter said to me yesterday, we shall have them down about our ears soon if we aren’t careful.’

  Oh, splendid. A tribal rising, and a wonderful cohort like his to meet it with. ‘It’s a good thing we mend our walls, then,’ Justin said disgustedly.

  Licinius picked up the wolf skin and whistled the dog to heel, and taking their spears, they set off homeward. As they came in through the Dexter Gate, they saw a tall, fair-haired man with the luxuriant mustache cultivated by the Britons, settling the last of a pile of baled skins on the packsaddle of a small pony which braced its shaggy legs against the weight, swelling up its belly when the man came to tighten the cinches.

  ‘Ah, would you now, oh lazy one?’ the man said in the soft-voiced speech of the Britons, kneeing the beast sharply in the ribs. The pony let out its breath, and he pulled the cinches tight before it could draw it in again.

  ‘Going, Cunory?’ Licinius asked, coming up to him, while Whitepaw and the Briton’s pack of hounds eyed each other suspiciously.

  ‘Aye, this is my last trip this winter. I’ve sold all I can here, and there will be snow soon, and lambing season. My tribe will need every man to keep the wolf guard. I will sell the rest there.’ He was dressed in plaid woolen breeches and cloak and carried a light throw spear. A heavier boar spear was fastened to the side of the packsaddle.

  ‘Was it a good hunting?’

  ‘It was very good,’ Cunory said. ‘And I have brought back something alive as well, that will bring me as much as the skins.’ He pulled back a flap of hide toward the front of the bundle to disclose three very young puppies in a nest of skins, curled round each other for warmth. Cunory lifted one out and held him up. His coat was a fine dark steel color and he had feet apparently designed with a much larger animal in mind.

  ‘I bought them from one of the Painted People to the north. The mother died at the birth, and they said they would likely not live. But see, they have lived well enough. They will be good dogs, and one is a female.’

  Justin, who by this time had a fair knowledge of the local language, listened with interest.

  ‘Gods,’ Licinius said, looking at the puppy’s feet, ‘I think it’s going to be a horse.’

  ‘No, they’re wolfhounds,’ Justin said. ‘I had one when I was a boy that my father bought from a trader out of Hibernia. They make the best hunting dogs there are.’

  The little female was still snoring peacefully among the deerskins, but the third puppy had sat up and was looking curiously about him, his tail fanning happily back and forth.

  Justin reached out and picked him up. ‘Will you sell this one?’

  ‘Aye, I will sell either of the males. They are grown so that there is barely enough room for two on the pony.’

  Licinius regarded the puppy dubiously. ‘He’ll eat you out of half your pay.’

  ‘What else am I going to spend it on in this delightful place? Where do you kennel Whitepaw?’

  ‘With Aeresius at the Head of Neptune. He might have room for another.’

  An hour later, having haggled with Cunory over the price, and bathed – Justin barely preventing the puppy from leaping in as well – they were walking down the Street of Neptune, which took its name from the wineshop at the corner, with the dog clutched firmly under Justin’s cloak. He had already stopped in the odds-and-ends shop kept by Barates the Syrian and bought him a puppy collar of soft leather studded with brass.

  They halted before a doorway crudely carved with a head of Neptune, badge of the Ninth Legion. Aeresius was an ex-legionary himself and had served his term with the Eagles in the Hispana. Inside was the warm glow of lamplight and the sound of someone singing, horribly off-key, one of the songs the Legions marched to.

  They pushed through the crowd about the door, Whitepaw padding at Licinius’s heel, and took one of the farther tables, where the surgeon sat rubbing the stiffness from his knee. A blue-eyed girl with long brown braids and a bright tunic of blue and saffron checke
red wool brought them wine.

  ‘Good evening to you, Licinius the Surgeon. And you, Centurion,’ she added, looking curiously at Justin.

  ‘Hello, Gwytha,’ Licinius said. ‘I have brought Whitepaw back, as you can see, and we would like something to eat and to speak with Acresius.’

  ‘I’ll fetch him. He’s shaking dice with one of the Optios from the fort. Perhaps I can catch him before he shakes this shop away.’

  Justin looked after her. ‘Aeresius’s daughter?’

  ‘No, he never married. A trader left her for a debt a year or so back. Aeresius wasn’t very pleased, but since the trader had sold all his goods and claimed he’d been robbed of his money, Aeresius had to take what he could get.’ Licinius laughed. ‘He says he got her cheaply because she talks so much.’

  ‘I am very useful,’ the girl said indignantly, coming back. ‘And what is more, I am the only one who can keep the books straight.’ Justin raised his eyebrows. A British slave girl with a turn for mathematics was unusual, to say the least.

  She set two bowls of stew down before them. ‘And you needn’t goggle like that, Centurion,’ she added tartly. ‘A Greek clerk taught me, in Calleva, and I’m very good at it.’ She turned away as someone called for more wine, and Justin sat looking after her.

  ‘A most unusual slave,’ he murmured, when she was out of earshot.

  ‘She is from the Iceni to the south, and wellborn in her tribe, I think. She was quite young when a slave trader found her wandering alone, and – well, it happens often enough. Here’s Aeresius.’

  A square, greying man in his fifties, his sword arm crossed with the scars of twenty years’ service in the Legion, pulled up a chair beside them. ‘Gwytha says you wanted to talk to me.’

  ‘This is Centurion Corvus, new commander of the Eighth Cohort,’ Licinius said. ‘He wants you to kennel this monstrosity he has bought from Cunory the Hunter.’

  Justin took the puppy, who had been squirming madly the past ten minutes, from under his cloak and put him on the table; only a firm hand on his collar prevented him from jumping immediately to the floor where Whitepaw, for whom he had apparently developed an attachment, was lying at his master’s feet. Thwarted in this attempt, he stuck his nose in Justin’s bowl.

  ‘Finn!’ Justin snapped. The puppy withdrew and sat back on his haunches, looking up at him.

  ‘So, he obeys you already,’ Aeresius said, watching him. ‘He will make a good dog when he’s grown.’

  The matter was settled quickly. Justin set the puppy next to Whitepaw and sat idly listening to the hum of conversation around him. In one corner a group of soldiers were arguing the relative merits of two fighting cocks, while another two disputed the outcome of an arm-wrestling match with loud invitations to come outside and be convinced. The discussion was quieted somewhat as the mailed footsteps of the Watch clattered by in the road, their swinging lanterns setting the shadows to leaping on the building across the street, but it was taken up again as soon as they had passed. On the far side of the room, the Optio had apparently found another dicing partner and was speedily winning his opponent’s accumulated pay.

  Licinius had been drawn into a discussion with two other young officers, and Justin turned, for want of anything else to do, to watch Gwytha as she wove her way between the tables, a flask of wine in her hand. She was a tall girl, nearly as tall as he was himself, and her thick red-brown hair must have hung below her waist when it was unbraided. She was pretty enough, even by Roman standards, but he couldn’t imagine any Roman woman in that brilliant saffron and blue tunic. His mother, for instance, would have rolled up her eyes and turned pale at the mere thought of putting on such a garment.

  It seemed a shame the girl belonged to a wineshop keeper. She was quite obviously fit for better work, and the customers at the Head of Neptune could make it uncomfortable for a girl as young as she was.

  There was a loud crash and Justin was startled to see Gwytha box a drunken legionary’s ears with a force that sent him spinning off the bench and onto the floor.

  ‘If you try that again, I’ll knock your teeth out the back of your head,’ she said calmly, picking up the wine flask again. ‘I’m here to serve you wine, not to keep you amused.’

  The legionary looked up at her, startled. ‘Then give me some more wine,’ he said sullenly after a moment.

  Gwytha regarded him with distaste. ‘Nay, then, you’ve had enough. Go and cool your head somewhere, and when you come back, remember your manners.’ She turned her back on him to serve the men at the next table.

  The chastened legionary looked as if he were going to argue, and then thought better of it. He picked himself up and strode self-consciously to the door, followed by a brief wave of laughter from the room behind him.

  ‘Eugé, Gwytha, that was well done, hellcat!’

  ‘Hai, Manlius, didn’t I tell you Icenian women have minds of their own?’

  ‘Remember what Boudicca did to us!’

  Justin grinned. Apparently Gwytha was well able to take care of herself.

  Licinius saw him and grinned back. ‘Inspires you to protect the helpless little thing, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It inspires me to protect Manlius.’ He called Aeresius over and the three of them went together to make the puppy a bed in the storeroom, Whitepaw following at Licinius’s heels.

  Aeresius piled some old meal sacks in one corner of the dirt floor and Justin put the puppy down on them, telling him firmly that he was to stay. Finn yawned and seemed content with the arrangement, but Whitepaw nosed his way in between the men and, picking Finn up by the scruff of the neck, took him off to his own corner and curled himself up beside him.

  ‘So, they’re going to be friends,’ Licinius said. ‘A year from now we’ll have a fine hunting team, if we aren’t off hunting Brigantes or the Pict instead.’

  ‘What are they like?’ Justin asked. ‘The Picts?’

  ‘Like smoke. The Brigantes are fine fighters, but we can fence them in, given enough men. The Pict can hide behind a pilum shaft and come and go under our noses. We found that out in the last war in the north.’

  ‘Aye, we go looking for him and can’t find him,’ Aeresius said, ‘and when we turn around we find his little barbed arrow in our back instead.’

  II

  The Hunt

  As the two men came out into the street again, Licinius looked up at the sky where a few stars shone through a ragged hole in the enveloping clouds. The air was still and not quite as cold as it had been. He took a deep breath.

  ‘It’s going to snow soon,’ he said, and as he spoke, a few white flakes came drifting down around them, spiralling to the ground where they vanished as they landed. Somewhere, far off in the hills, a wolf howled, a long, drawn-out note, quavering and eerie, the voice of winter hunger.

  Justin shivered. He hadn’t known a wolf could be so intimidating.

  Licinius nodded. ‘Cunory’s going to have trouble with the wolf guard this winter,’ he said. ‘I think it’s going to be a rough one. They’ll be howling all round the lambing pens.’

  ‘Half-witted animals, sheep, at best,’ Justin remarked. ‘I’ve always considered a midwinter lambing season just one more proof of it.’

  ‘They’re not bright,’ Licinius agreed. ‘I once saw a whole flock jump off a cliff because something had frightened one of them.’

  ‘There’s something so wasteful about stupidity. Speaking of which, here’s young Favonius.’

  ‘And a couple of his brothers-in-arms, out for a night on the town.’

  ‘The gods help the town. Greet him politely, smile nicely. That’s it. We can be little gentlemen if we try. Maybe it isn’t snowing after all. I don’t see any more coming down, and there’s another break in the clouds, over there.’

  ‘Little enough you know about it, my boy.’

  It did snow, starting heavily the next night, and the wind came up again as well, howling round the roof and piling great drifts against the walls of th
e fort. It was still coming down the following morning, the wind dying and rising by turns, blowing the snow into little feathered ridges along the ground, and clawing at doors and windows. Even where hot air from the hypocausts flowed through the wall flues, the buildings were icy and iron braziers were set up, their glowing flames jumping in the wind that somehow found its way inside and whistled across the floor. The grey cloaks of the sentries were almost lost in the blur of the driving snow, and Justin, slogging his way disgustedly across the fort to put in his monthly request for transfer, saw that someone had wrapped the single rosebush outside the Principia with a sack to keep it from the frost.

  The Legate’s staff greeted him as an old acquaintance, handed him the proper request forms, and waited, grinning, while he copied them out. This usually served to infuriate Justin, but today he grinned reluctantly back at them. He wasn’t going anywhere in this weather, anyway.

  It was impossible to work in the blinding storm, and the men were set to marching in the drill shed or sent to the armory to check and mend equipment. The sentries, who kept only half watches each now, returned, cold and stamping the snow from their feet, to strip their sodden leggings off and stand shivering at the braziers.

  Justin, drilling his men that afternoon, abandoned the usual practice of keeping a supervisory eye out from a distance and marched with them instead. It was warmer that way.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ Licinius asked, encountering him in the mess hall that night. ‘Hippo Regius. Oh, my innocent!’

  ‘Oh, stow it. What have you got for frostbite?’

  ‘Another layer of wool in your leggings and don’t thaw out so quickly when you come in,’ Licinius said unsympathetically.

  Justin sat up late that night, having experimented and found that it was colder when you were lying down, dutifully writing a letter to his mother at Antium by the flame of the little bronze lamp. He had meant to do it sooner, and should have, he thought guiltily, closing the two leaves of the tablet and sealing them. It would take longer than ever to reach her now, with winter making the roads bad.