The Legions of the Mist

by Damion Hunter

  Gwytha, with the Legion on a month’s punishment, spent much of her time with Januaria now. But after the night of the Governor’s visit, she was content to wait, and the cold, sinking feeling she used to get when she thought of Justin and their marriage was gone. In gratitude for Licinius’s unasked-for marital advice, she took his medical advice religiously, eating as she was told and walking for miles over the spring countryside with Finn beside her, waving his plumed tail above the tall grass. Since Licinius was also doing extra duty, she would often stop and pick up Whitepaw as well.

  Whitepaw was still quartered at the Head of Neptune, now under new management. The owner had arrived early in the spring, and there had been a sticky moment when he had inquired as to Gwytha’s whereabouts. But since the shop itself was enough to cover Aeresius’s debt to him, and as he had no wish to tangle with the tall, dark-browed centurion who informed him curtly that the wench was now his wife, he decided to let well enough alone. He intended selling the shop anyway as soon as a buyer could be found, and any effort to reclaim Gwytha which kept him stuck in a dump like Eburacum town for a minute longer than necessary was, as he told his junior partner, not worth her price.

  He looked curiously at the freedwoman the first time she came for Whitepaw. He remembered her vaguely from the time, a year ago, when he had supervised the delivery of a shipment to Aeresius… a tall British wench in an outlandish blue and saffron checkered tunic and two long brown braids wrapped in deerhide. This, however, was a Roman lady, taller than most, but with a graceful carriage, and clad in a tunic and mantle of soft blue wool worked with a pattern of white vine leaves at the hem. She was shod in soft leather boots of a deeper blue, and the brown hair was now coiled in an intricate knot on her head, the front trimmed short and arranged to fall in soft curls about her forehead. She wore a pair of gold eardrops cast in the same stag’s-head pattern as her centurion’s signet ring, and her cheeks and lips had a rosy glow that bespoke skillful use of a paint pot. She was also, he thought, with child.

  She gave a soft whistle that brought Whitepaw hurtling from the storeroom, thanked the shop owner gravely, and turned back down the road, the two dogs racing exuberantly ahead. The proprietor watched her go, saw the junior surgeon from the fort wave and call out to her and a thin, freckled centurion with a stubborn chin stop and speak affectionately. Apparently she had other champions than her beak-nosed husband. Nor did her new and elegant image altogether erase from his mind a picture of the wench clouting a drunken legionary halfway across the wineshop. All in all, he thought he had been wise.

  But Gwytha, for all her air of assurance, had thirteen years of slavery behind her, and it had left its mark. She breathed a sigh of relief when the shop was sold to a time-expired soldier come back from a Rhenish Legion, who knew nothing of her story.

  Meantime the Legion, grumbling, worked out its month’s punishment and was almost immediately ordered out on patrol. Justin’s cohort went with them.

  ‘It’s not fair!’ Gwytha clung to him the night before they marched, her soft hair falling about his face. ‘We’ve had so little time. Just when…’

  ‘I know. Just when things were happy between us.’ He kissed her and settled her head in the crook of his arm. ‘It won’t be long. I’ll be back before the babe is born.’

  ‘I was so happy, even when you couldn’t get home. Now I’m afraid.’

  ‘I doubt I’m in much danger this trip. The Brigantes are paying their taxes and behaving like little gentlemen. Even old Cathuil has rebuilt and moved back to his hall. He even comes into Isurium sometimes to show us how law-abiding he is.’ Suddenly he sounded disgusted. ‘They’re too good to be true, of course. Why won’t the Emperor leave Parthia alone and save the provinces he’s got?’

  ‘He thinks he can hold it all, I expect. But I think he puts too great a distance between Rome and the edge of her Empire.’ She propped herself up on one elbow. ‘Justin, I would like to see Rome sometime.’

  ‘Well, then you shall. But you surprise me.’

  ‘It’s a part of you… and of our child. And now I suppose I’m a part of it. Tell me about Rome.’

  Justin closed his eyes, remembering. ‘Lovely. A city of marble. It shines. At a distance anyway. Close up it has its horrors, like any other city, I suppose. But it’s beautiful all the same. The mother of us all.’

  ‘Would you live there?’

  ‘Perhaps for a while, for the excitement of it. Not forever. Gwytha…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Would you like to go back to your people? You said once that you would never go back… but now, with me, and the babe?’

  ‘I don’t know. I would like to see my mother again… but I don’t know that she would like to see me. She lost a child of the Iceni. Would she want back a grown woman with a Roman lord?’

  ‘Would they hate me so much?’

  ‘Perhaps. They might even hate me. There is no love for Rome among my people. I don’t imagine your mother is overjoyed either,’ she added drily.

  ‘She’ll come round. Does it bother you still?’

  ‘Not as it did. You are the other half of my heart, and you have learned to love me. Nothing else is as important.’ She touched his face lightly, tracing the ridge of his brow and the angle of his nose.

  ‘If we’re lucky, the babe won’t inherit that,’ he murmured, looking at her like a cat through half-closed lids. He pulled her into his arms again. ‘Think about it. We could go south this winter when I have leave. Your world is part of me now. I would like to see it.’

  She sighed and snuggled against him, and the need of her, as strong as ever, overcame him. He rolled over, pinning her beneath him. Her legs opened and closed around him hungrily as he took her.

  * * *

  In the morning, he marched out with his cohort and two others, north toward Cataractonium. From there they would branch westward to Alauna and Luguvallium, then east along the northern frontier, and sweep north and west again through the outpost forts of the old province of Valentia. They would return again through Luguvallium, south and east to the main northern road above Eburacum. Another detachment under the Primus Pilus would make the southern sweep through Lindum and back, a shorter tour by half. The Legate with the northern detachment, and the Primus Pilus with the southern, would inspect the marching camps and outpost forts, drop off replacements, collect those whose tour of frontier duty had expired, and further the good behavior of the Brigantes by, as Justin said, ‘letting them know we have our beady eye on them.’

  Gwytha watched until the last tail of the baggage train rattled out of sight, and then turned back to the house to help Januaria with her baking. Finn drooped dejectedly at her heel.

  ‘You miss him too, don’t you?’ Finn pressed his muzzle mournfully against her chest, and Gwytha rubbed the grey head. ‘Come, then, I’ll find you a bone.’

  Finn followed her into the kitchen where the grey and white cat spat at him from the cupboard. Taking the bone gently in his jaws, he retreated to the atrium to worry it in dignified silence.

  Feeling much the same, Gwytha took out her bread pans. The sun flowed through the window, making bright pools on the floor; everywhere was the scent of roses and honeysuckle, and a nightingale was running through his repertoire in the garden. It was a glory of a late spring day, and the house had never felt so bereft.

  * * *

  To Justin, in a miserably uncomfortable marching camp on the Alauna road, the world was also very empty. His life seemed to have turned itself around of late, and there were parts of it he didn’t know how to tackle.

  The matter of Gwytha’s people, for instance. Should he have let well enough alone, or would they accept her… and if they didn’t, how much would that hurt her? The Iceni had no fondness for Romans, least of all the Ninth Legion. This had been forcibly demonstrated over fifty years ago when their warrior queen Boudicca had led an uprising that all but destroyed the Legion. Two thousand men were slaughtered, along with the citizen
s of Camulodunum, Verulamium, and Londinium. Then an avenging force drawn from two other Legions had marched in and laid waste the country of the Iceni until all that was left of a once-great people were a few scattered and leaderless villages. There would be little love there for an officer of the Eagles.

  A bugle shrilled reveille outside his tent. ‘Go blow your damn horn someplace else,’ a voice muttered from a tent across the road, and Justin pulled himself out of the cramped camp bed, feeling in the semidark for his sandals. They were on the march again today, north toward the frontier which marked the sphere of Roman domination. Taxes were demanded, and occasionally paid, from the tribes of Valentia to the north, but since the frontier had been pulled back such requests were more often ignored than not. Once, when Agricola commanded in Britain, the Eagles had pacified the land as far north as the fortress of Inchtuthil in Pict country. Under their war leader Calgacus, the Picts had brought thirty thousand men against the Eagles, and their defeat by Agricola’s army at Mons Graupius had broken the Picts in two. But then Agricola had been recalled to Rome, and the Emperor Domitian, troubled by war in Germany, had pulled the Second Adiutrix out of Britain.

  The combination had been fatal. Within four years, the lack of manpower had forced the evacuation of the legionary fortress at Inchtuthil. And slowly, as a new generation of men grew up among the Picts and boys whose fathers had died at Mons Graupius came to manhood, the Roman frontier fell back and back, under a steady pressure of ambushes and raids, too undermanned to mount a campaign of reconquest. Now the Army patrolled the north only when, like last summer, there was an immediate danger to be dealt with. This summer’s sweep would take them only as far as Trimontium, little more than a day’s march north of the Segedunum-Luguvallium frontier line.

  The territory of the Brigantes extended north of that line, but most of their holdings lay below it. There were rebuilt steadings and newly planted fields everywhere. Taxes and good manners were much in evidence. As for Vortrix, his family holding lay northward in the lowlands, and there he was presumably lying low.

  Justin tightened the straps of his breastplate, crammed his helmet gloomily on his head, and went out to inspect his cohort.

  Ten days later he was squelching through the mud at Vindolanda, one of the least delightful of a string of rundown frontier fortifications. It was raining, as it had been ever since they had reached the frontier. They had been rained on in camp, rained on throughout the march, and now they were being rained on through holes in the roof. The summer rain came down in sheets from the north, and up from the south on a howling wind, slamming together over the frontier and pouring buckets on the ground below. The Army got a cold, the cavalry horses got thrush, and everyone got heartily sick of Vindolanda. It was understandable that postings to the frontier were generally of short duration.

  The commanders of the northern forts reported no martial activity among the Brigantes, and taxes were coming in from the northern holdings as well as the southern. There was more likely to be trouble from the Picts, in their opinion; the blue bandits were raiding farther and farther south, preying almost indiscriminately on Roman settlements and British alike. The Selgovae, who were kin to the Brigantes and whose land lay between them and the Picts, were quiet, although it was known to be unhealthy to linger in their territory too lightly armed. And when were they going to get some reinforcements?

  Everywhere the story was the same. The auxiliary garrisons of the northern forts were desperately thin of men, and their discipline in the harsh conditions of the frontier, and without strong leadership from the Legion, was deteriorating rapidly. The Legate gave orders for shoring up the worst of the problems, and moved on.

  * * *

  ‘This used to be a rearward fortress. Now it becomes an outpost.’ Justin was perched on the rampart of Trimontium, where he and Licinius had spent the evening with the Legate and the rest of his senior officers discussing the situation in the north with the garrison commander. Originally built to hold a full Legion, Trimontium had been garrisoned only with a small body of Auxiliaries since the Eagles had pulled back from the north. Its red sandstone ramparts shone huge and lonely in the moonlight beneath the three peaks which gave the fort its name, and small insect noises drifted up from the grass below.

  ‘Aye, and we’ll end up pulling back from this too, in time, if they don’t bring in someone to stop the rot.’

  ‘When I was posted here, I thought we could,’ Justin said. ‘Now I begin to wonder if anyone can. Or am I becoming like the rest of them? I know I care what happens, and not for the Legion only.’

  ‘Britain exerts a strong pull,’ Licinius said. ‘I remember telling you when you were first posted here. Now you begin to understand.’

  ‘I understand that we are all that holds this island free of sea raiders, or the next invasion. Without the Eagles and the Fleet, the sea raiders would grow bolder and the tribes would be pushed aside as they pushed the dark folk. If we had another Agricola, we could make this island a fortress no one could conquer.’

  ‘Including Rome. That may well have occurred to the Emperor too, you know. It would be too easy for a British Governor to name himself Caesar and stand off the best that Rome could throw at him. I doubt we’ll get the chance.’

  ‘All the same, the Eagles must endure here, or there will be a burning like has never been seen. Bah! I sound like Cassandra.’ He kicked against the stone wall of the parapet.

  A lantern came swinging along the walkway and the sentry paused and regarded them dubiously. ‘Sorry, sirs, I didn’t recognize you. Whatever are you doing up here?’

  ‘Admiring the view,’ Justin said.

  ‘Aye, well, you’d best be getting back to your camp. It’s going to rain like Hades.’

  ‘How can you tell?’ Licinius looked at the sky, star-strewn with only a light wisp of cloud across it.

  ‘You get to know, out here. It’ll be coming down by the pailful in an hour.’

  ‘Judging by the weather so far, I imagine he’s right,’ Licinius said, getting to his feet. ‘Come along; it’s a good two miles to camp, and I’ve no mind to swim it.’

  The Legion had been put to use repairing the Trimontium road on the march north, and had consequently installed itself where the work was, in a small marching camp to the south. They would be barracked at Trimontium the next night to conduct repairs on the fortress itself (the present garrison was too small to do more than keep it operational) before heading across the mountains to the western outpost stations.

  Licinius, who had made the same patrol sweep before, two years ago, was disquieted by the evidence of disrepair and suspicious that it was not entirely due to lack of men. This impression was heightened during their stay by the large number of tribesmen, men of the Selgovae, who frequented the fortress apparently unchallenged. The Legate didn’t like it either, and ordered the commander sharply to shape up his security, or be prepared to get a very nasty surprise one day. The commander assured him earnestly that he would do so.

  ‘In a pig’s ear,’ Justin said. ‘Hasn’t Lupus got sense enough to realize the garrison’s probably making a very tidy profit in trade and paying for it by bending rules?’

  ‘If he does, he doesn’t think they’ll risk getting knifed in the back for it. The other possibility probably hasn’t occurred to him.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That Trimontium is the Selgovae’s hidden asset,’ Licinius said shortly.

  ‘Do you think they’re that far gone?’

  ‘I hope there’s never a rising up here, or we’ll find out.’

  ‘They ought to be replaced.’

  ‘What with? Do you honestly think the other Auxiliaries are in any better shape? And we can’t spare a legionary cohort.’

  ‘Then we’d better pray to Mithras that the north stays quiet.’

  Licinius looked at him. ‘That’s not a bad idea, taken literally,’ he said.

  By common consent they turned their steps toward the tem
ple of Mithras outside the Trimontium walls. The mystery of the Mithraic sect was not one which was often discussed even between initiates, and they walked in silence, their thoughts shared but unvoiced. There was no formal ritual scheduled that day and no vestments to add solemnity to their service, but helm and breastplate were fitting garb in which to worship the god of soldiers.

  The temple, built by a long-ago commander at Trimontium, was small and cavelike, with a double row of benches lining the nave. At the far end, flanked by the twin torchbearers of light and darkness, was the carved relief of a great bull, his head bent back before the knife of the man who rode him… Mithras, the Guide and Mediator, whose word was Light.

  As initiates of the soldier’s degree, Justin and Licinius were not permitted the sanctum opposite the altars but were free to enter the main temple at any time. And Mithraism was a sect whose initiates formed their own priesthood.

  It was dark, with only a small window to light the altars of the Bull-Slayer, and they stood still a moment to accustom their eyes to the dimness. Then Justin began the invocation, his armor washed with a faint gleam from the window as he moved before the altars.

  ‘Oh, Mithras, Unconquered Sun, Redeemer…’

  ‘Grant us thy aid and intercession…’ Licinius also stepped forward.

  ‘And take our pleas before the Lord of Boundless Time.’

  ‘As you slew the Bull for our sakes…’ Justin raised his dagger to the altar.

  ‘Take now our Sacrifice, freely given…’