This is my first visit to Britain, and I find it endlessly fascinating. Rome has been collecting tribute here since Julius Caesar’s day, of course, albeit sporadically, but it wasn’t until the emperor Claudius decided to bring it into the empire that we really had any knowledge of the land. The changes in the thirty years since then are astonishing. We are a nation of builders. When we come onto new ground, we raise a Roman city on it and thus say, “This is ours.”
Londinium, destroyed in a tribal war and rebuilt only fifteen years ago, might be any city in Italy, except for the weather. The same can be said of Camulodunum and Verulamium, and all the Down Country of the south is beginning to take on a Roman look – Roman houses, Roman temples, and a native people growing Roman. And then to the north and west, suddenly the wild lands – high hill country with native fortifications guarding the passes, and tribe fighting tribe as often as not, but above all a wild feel in the air of being on the far edge of the world. And beyond that, who knows? The Pict lands, to start, the Painted People – all the Britons tattoo themselves, but the Picts do it from head to toe, which must be very strange and beautiful, although it is said that even the Britons of these parts consider the Pict a barbarian and not, perhaps, quite human. I don’t know what the Picti worship, and suspect I wouldn’t care to be introduced, but the southern Britons worship much the same gods as the Gauls, and, like the Gauls and Germans, they are a horse people. They worship Earth Mother in several of her infinite forms and a sun god whose festival marks the ripening of the crops at midsummer.
There is a Lady of the Horses called Epona, whose shrines may be found all over, and innumerable local deities, many of them Earth Mother or Lugh (their sun god) in tribal personification. The Underworld they see as a shining land of the perpetually young, somewhere in the west across the sea. Or alternatively as a realm beneath the earth to which entrance may be gained in certain spots. They make much of their dead and frequently lay them in graves with half their earthly riches, believing that at year’s end they may come back through the gates of the sidhe – the hollow hills – and walk in their old haunts again. There are innumerable heroes and half gods, water sprites and prophesying heads, and a priestly class (outlawed by Rome in theory if not in fact) who claim descent from the legendary Old Ones who built the great stone rings with which the land is dotted.
It rains here. Even in summer it rains, especially in the highlands of the west and north, and the water gets into our boots and bedding and supplies and drips down the backs of our necks; and in the winter, I am told, all foreigners have a perpetual cold.
It began to rain, even as he wrote, a warm summer rainfall that soaked quickly into the meadows – enough to wet the grasses, no more.
Enough to soak Correus’s unhappy legionaries, grumblingly making their way into the hill country. They had been pleased enough at first to ride instead of walk, but they were foot soldiers, used to the steady twenty-mile-a-day pace of the legions, and they found speedily that while a horse gave more speed and was easier on the feet, for a man not used to the saddle it was no pleasure.
“If he wanted a damned cavalry, why didn’t he take the damned cavalry?” a legionary grumbled, shifting his weight in the saddle. They had slowed to a trot as the way grew rougher, and he found it more painful than the cavalry canter they had maintained earlier.
“Commander took us cause we’re his,” the man beside him said. “It’ll be tricky enough where we’re going, I’m thinking, without the commander depending on some fool cavalry troop he’s never seen before.”
“Then they shoulda sent a friggin’ cavalry commander,” the first man said. “I joined up with the legions, not the friggin’ auxiliaries.”
“Aw, use your head. The commander practically turns into one o’ them heathen Britons under your nose, and that’s what’s wanted where we’re goin’, I reckon. Or did you figure we’d just charge the Demetae straight on, all two centuries of us?”
“Tighten up there, if you please. And pipe down. This isn’t a public meeting.” The centurion of the third century went by at a canter and drew rein beside Correus just ahead.
“No sign of the enemy, sir.” The junior centurion tapped his lorica lightly with his knuckles in salute. The rain dripped off his helmet rim, and he ignored it stoically.
“Very well, Centurion.” Correus’s face was muffled in the hood of a brown-and-blue cloak of native weave, and Centurion Aquila watched him curiously.
This was the first time he had served as second-in-command to Centurion Julianus, but Octavius was still in hospital with a healing cut in his sword arm, and so the commander, who wanted a reliable second, had elected to take the third century with the first, which came under his direct command. Aquila, a Neapolitan landowner’s son who had done his Centuriate training only a year behind Correus, was gratified by the selection and prayed fervently that it might soon augur a cohort command of his own.
“There’s just one thing, sir,” he said hesitantly. “We’ll have to rest them soon, or none of our apprentice cavalry will be able to walk in the morning.”
Correus smiled, an expression halfway between amusement and – something. Although Aquila didn’t know what mightily important piece of information the missing courier had been carrying in his head, he knew well enough why they were riding with rusted armor and dun-colored tunics into the Demetae’s hills, and he wouldn’t have stood in his commander’s sandals just now for double his pay.
Correus squinted ahead through the falling rain and the gray green air and pointed to an outcrop of rock with a grove of trees below it that would give some shelter and readily available grass beyond. “Halt them there, and let them get out of the wet. I don’t care if their backsides are sore or not, but I can’t afford to have them hacking and coughing like a lung ward.”
Aquila raised his vine staff to the horsemen behind him and pointed, and they quickened their pace gratefully. They would have only to tether their horses and pitch their tents, a welcome relief from routine. They would post double pickets that night, but there would be no Roman earthworks to mark where they’d slept.
* * *
At his desk, Governor Frontinus also sat listening to the rain tapping on the scarlet-dyed leathers of his tent. It would blur the Demetae’s trail, he thought. He hoped Centurion Julianus really did know where they were laired. A fruitless speculation, since if Julianus didn’t know, neither did anyone else. He also hoped Julianus didn’t keel over halfway there from that head wound, as Silanus had grimly predicted. He sighed and began to read over the sheet of papyrus that lay drying on the desk before him:
To Flavius Appius Julianus, from Sextus Julius Frontinus, military governor, Province of Britain…
… It has come to my knowledge through no fault of your son’s that he has bound himself with some sort of vow, always a dangerous thing for a senior officer who may find his vows at odds with his duty… With respect, sir, a damn fool thing to do, and I can only warn you, you may lose both your sons by it. I can only suggest that you propitiate whatever gods are necessary, if any were invoked, and release your son from his debt at the earliest possible time… Of course this is a private matter. This letter comes, through the hands of no secretary, from Sextus Julius Frontinus, etc…
“That ought to stir up his temper,” Frontinus said with satisfaction. “But I expect he’ll listen.” Appius Julianus had been a career soldier himself, and there were several points with respect to that profession that ought to fly home. The governor folded the papyrus sheet and put a stick of purple wax in the lamp flame. He rolled it carefully on the fold and pushed his seal into it.
Frontinus rose to call an optio and then sat back down again thoughtfully. He put the letter in a cubbyhole in the desk. Time enough to post it when Julianus and his brother both came back alive.
V Carn Goch
The sky was full of a waxing moon, and in two days it would be Lughnasadh, the night of the Midsummer Fires. A double line of horsemen tro
tted up the track like ghosts, silent under the moon. They rode by night now, bridle rings muffled with strips of rag. Correus wished for the thousandth time that he could have had his borrowed troop horses’ shoes pulled, but it would likely only have made their feet sore. Instead their hooves were wrapped in makeshift boots of cloth which had a maddening tendency to slip when the horses weren’t trying to kick them off, but it helped to obscure their path. The Demetae as a rule didn’t shoe their ponies.
They halted for a brief rest, and Correus studied the sky and the moonlit hills and tried to remember a way traveled months ago by daylight. The rain had washed out most of the trail they followed, and he was no more than a passable tracker. But he was almost sure now where the survivors of the fight at Moridunum had made for – Carn Goch, the Place of Red Stone, still northeastward by a day’s ride.
He had passed that way in early summer and had seen it – a dry stone wall guarding what he had guessed to be some twenty-five acres along a ridge top lying between the Tuvius and the small lake that was the headwaters of the Isca River. It was built for warfare – not a village, but a place of refuge for the Demetae villages that lay along the edge of the Silures’ western hunting runs and were most vulnerable to Silure raids. With the chieftain’s hall at Dun Mori razed, it was to Carn Goch that the Demetae would go now for refuge from the Romans.
There was a scuffling and a spate of raised voices behind him, and Correus swung round in the saddle with fire in his eye to see who had broken silence.
“I ought to have you crucified,” Centurion Aquila hissed, his hand clenched tightly on a legionary’s collar.
“Sorry, sir, but you ought to see what’s in those trees.” The legionary gestured to a stand of oaks some fifty paces away. They had halted well into a wood for cover. “Well, look then,” he said grudgingly as Aquila glared at him. “I was goin’ to show you anyway.” The legionary fished in his cloak and drew out a small, shallow bowl that shone gold in the moonlight. “Pure gold, that is. And more to be found, like as not.” The men around him murmured and pushed close.
“Give me that!” Correus’s voice snapped from beside and above him, and the legionary jumped.
“Aw, now, sir, I found it.”
“Give me that or I’ll leave you here for its owner to deal with.” Correus held out his hand and felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle as he took the bowl. There was something dark and sticky at the bottom. “All right—” Correus peered at his face. “Porcus, is it? Now strip.”
“What?”
“Down to your tunic. We may be watched, and you’re going to make amends. That bowl is an offering. How long have you been in Britain, you fool, that you don’t know better than to steal from an oak grove?”
“But strip, sir?” Porcus wailed, seeing both his prize and his dignity vanish as his fellows began to snicker.
“An oak grove is holy. You don’t take iron into it.”
“You don’t believe in that heathen trash, sir?” another man said, as the unfortunate Porcus began to unbuckle his lorica.
“I believe in whoever put that bowl there, that this ass was fool enough to take,” Correus said. “One more word out of anyone, and I’ll leave him in that grove to test his theories.”
Porcus’s companion subsided under Aquila’s raised hand as Correus dismounted and handed his sword belt and dagger to Aquila. “Hang onto that,” he said. He ran his hands over his clothing quickly, thinking, but could remember no other iron. His cloak pin was bronze and amber, and the bracelets pushed high up on his arms were enamel and copper. “All right, you.” He took Porcus by the collarbone, much as Aquila had held him, and marched him into the grove. The flat gold bowl felt hot to the touch, but it might have been imagination only.
The grove had a small clearing at the center where a single tree had been cut down and its stump left to form a rude altar. Correus knelt down before it, having no idea what ritual should be invoked, but he knew without question whose altar it was. Groves belonged to the Mother-of-All in her darker forms, whereas the hilltops and places of light were Lugh’s.
He set the bowl on the altar and saw that it, too, was dark with old blood. “This is where you found it?”
Porcus nodded. “Sir—”
“Shut up!” There was another presence in the grove with them, and Correus knew without looking that it was Nighthawk’s people. And that they would not be seen if he did look. Perhaps they would take the offering as it was meant and not waste their time telling the Demetae of the Romans in their wood. Nighthawk had implied that it was all one to them. He pulled his cloak pin free and jabbed the end of it hard into his thumb, gritting his teeth as it drew blood. It was not particularly sharp, and there was a bent place at the end where he had used it to punch a new hole in a packsaddle strap.
“Your turn.” He handed the pin to Porcus who looked at it and winced.
“Draw blood, or I’ll do it for you,” Correus threatened. He held his own thumb above the bowl and squeezed a few drops out with the fingers of his other hand.
Porcus gave him a black look, but when Correus reached for the cloak pin, he obeyed. “Ow! Typhon, that hurts!” He started to suck his thumb, but Correus grabbed it and held it over the bowl, squeezing the dark blood into a little pool at the bottom.
“Be glad it’s just your thumb,” he hissed. His head was beginning to ache, and he ran his right hand over his forehead, still holding Porcus’s wrist with his left.
“These gods are forbidden anyway,” Porcus grumbled. “What’s a gold pot more or less?”
“The Druid priests are forbidden because they stir up trouble,” Correus said with as much patience as he could muster. “Rome has never forbidden anyone’s gods. And it never pays to insult the Mother. But in this case I’m more concerned about her followers. If they decide you’ve committed a sacrilege, they may jump us, and then the rest of our men will have to come and get us out, and after that you might just as well send a message to the Demetae straight, saying, ‘Look out, here we come.’ Use your head. Damn! Mine aches like fire.” He put his hand to his forehead again. More and more he felt something wrong in this place. He gave Porcus a shove. “Go on, get out of here. I’ll be right behind you.”
He turned back to lay a silver denarius on the altar. It would give him great pleasure to take that out of Porcus’s pay. As he bent to place it beside the bowl, he could hardly bear to get his hand so close, and the prickling sensation on the back of his neck intensified. He had strayed into a grove of the Mother once before, in Germany, when Flavius had been hurt in a hunting accident, and he and Paulinus had been searching desperately for the shortest trail back to the camp. He had felt the same way then, with Flavius sitting bleeding in the saddle before him. He wasn’t sure if it was the Dark Mother herself, or the unwanted bond that tied him to Flavius, or both, but with those unseen eyes on his back, it was all he could do not to run as he left the grove. When he reached his men, he mounted and put them onto the trail at a trot.
* * *
“There it is.”
Carn Goch lay along the ridge top, its red stone walls silvered in the moonlight. A faint glow above them gave evidence of lit fires inside, and the sounds of human habitation came across the still air to where the Romans lay hidden in a screen of trees below the ridge – the murmur of voices and, once, the muffled whinny of a horse. The legionaries slapped their hands to their ponies’ noses lest one of them whinny in answer. They listened in silence for a moment, broken only by the faint hoo-hoo of an owl (Correus hoped it was an owl) and the sound of a vixen calling to her mate across the hillside.
They had spent the day hidden in a thicket where they had forded the Tuvius, and then at nightfall had begun their cautious approach.
“If we sat out one more day, it would be Midsummer Night,” Aquila whispered. “We might stand a better chance with a feast going on. And folk coming and going, I expect.”
“I don’t dare,” Correus said. “One more day mig
ht be too late. Any man will talk sometime.” His voice was deliberately cool, but Aquila could tell he spoke through gritted teeth, and he eyed his commander admiringly. By the time they had set out, rumor had already gone round the camp that the missing courier was half brother to their centurion.
“Do you think he’s still there at all, sir?” Aquila whispered back. “Could they have sent him to Bendigeid?” There was no point in mincing words.
“They haven’t had time. And I think they’ll make Bendigeid come to them – they need his war band. That’s one reason they’re camped here. It’s the closest holding to Bendigeid’s lands. In fact, it’s a defensive position, built to hold out against Silure cattle raids. But they’ll open up the gates to them now fast enough. That’s another reason I can’t wait. I haven’t the men to fight Bendigeid.”
“Right.” Aquila’s hands were clenched tightly on the riding crop he carried in place of his vine staff. “Then let’s get on with it, sir.” He laid a hand lightly on the shoulder of the man behind him. “Send Cornelius up here to the commander.”
There was a murmur in the silence, and then a third man slipped up beside them. He also wore native garb now, and there was a dagger in his hand. The moonlight slid bluely along the blade. “Ready when you are, sir.”
Correus nodded, and the two of them slipped out of the trees into the low scrub that covered the slope below Carn Goch.
Aquila watched them without reaction, knowing that the men were watching him, but his stomach twisted suddenly into a knot. If the centurion were killed, Aquila would have his command, at least for as long as it took to do what the commander had been sent to do. He didn’t want it. Not at that price.
* * *
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