by Angus Watson
“Fucking… Fuck! Pigs’ cunts!” he shouted. Bel but it was painful.
“Let me…” said Chamanca, reaching for it, her bloody face a picture of contrition.
“Get off. Let’s go like we already should have done. Come on!” They had to get clear before the next volley. He stood and ran, glancing over his shoulder. Chamanca was following. Every pace sent jets of agony pulsing along his arm, through his torso and head. They reached the horses and he swung up, kicked the beast and set off at gallop.
“Sorry!” shouted Chamanca behind him. It was, thought Atlas, gripping the shaft of the arrow with his left hand, a bit late for that. She’d had to stop for a drink and now he had an arrow through his shoulder.
He snapped the shaft, chucked away the feathered end, reached over his shoulder and grasped the head. He pulled hard, but it was slick with blood. His hand slipped, the edges of the iron head slicing his palm and fingers open. He gripped again, higher up the shaft so that the iron corners dug into his hand to give him purchase. He pulled and this time, the shaft came through his shoulder and out. Waves of agony pulsed through him. As he lost consciousness, he held the arrowhead to his nose. Was that shit he could smell on there? Yes, he thought as the world disappeared, he rather thought that it was, Sobek curse them.
They were fleeing! The British were vanquished, galloping away inland and northwards. Rome had shown her might and Britain had been found wanting.
“A good start!” Ragnall said to himself.
“Do you think so?” said the Syrian helmsman.
“Well, we won.”
“Did we?”
“Yes, of course we did. Look, the Britons are fleeing. That’s what armies do when they’ve lost.”
“That’s a few horses, not an army. You heard the trumpets, there’s a lot more where that came from.”
“Possibly, but, like I said, a good start.”
“Yeah? How many Britons did you see killed?”
“Um… well Atlas–the African who attacked the tortoise–took an arrow.”
“Yes, that’s all I saw as far as Britons wounded or killed went. How many legionaries would you say lost their lives? Two hundred? More?”
“Probably more…”
“So let me get this straight.” The helmsman smiled. “Hundreds of Romans were killed and one Briton was injured, and that’s a loss for the Britons?”
“It’s more complicated than the butcher’s bill–that means how many were killed or injured.”
“I know what butcher’s bill means. This is not my first war, young man.”
There were two nasty scars on the man’s left cheek and a chunk missing near his right temple, he was about double Ragnall’s age, and as a ship’s captain in the Roman navy, Ragnall conceded, he’d probably seen quite a bit of military action. No doubt he’d served in Pompey’s famously bloody pirate wars. But obviously, like so many junior ranks, he didn’t understand warfare and Ragnall would have to explain.
“The Romans’ goal today was to land and establish a beachhead.” He pointed at the Tenth Legion. They may have lost their aquilifer to Lowa’s arrow, but they were jogging proudly southwards, their feet crunching out satisfyingly well-trained, regular beats on the British shingle.
“And the Britons’ goal was to prevent the Romans landing. Now, the Romans may have lost more men, but if you know about war, you’ll know that a general who’s afraid of losing a few soldiers will not be a general for long. The Romans have landed, the Britons have failed to stop them, so the Romans have won.”
“I see,” said the helmsman.
“Good,” said Ragnall, putting a hand on the sailor’s shoulder.
“So let me get it clear,” said the simple man, “it’s a Roman victory if the Roman goal was to land and the Britons’ goal was to stop them.”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for explaining.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Thing is, though, and I’m sure you’re right, but how do we know the enemy’s goal? How do you know the Britons were trying to stop the Romans from landing?”
“Of course they were, it’s obvious, they—”
“Are you sure? ’Cos I didn’t see anything to suggest that they were. I saw them kill a lot–a lot–and I saw them fight well–very well–and then I saw them run off as if it had been their plan all along to put the fear of Mars into the legionaries then let the Romans come ashore.”
“No, no, that’s wrong. They were definitely trying to stop the landing. Of course they were. What else…”
“If you say so! You’re a legate and I’m just a captain,” said the grinning Syrian.
He really was an irritating little man.
Chapter 7
The bay’s water was golden, smooth as a consul’s tablecloth, punctuated only by the mast of the whale-holed sailing ship which had limped to shore, grounded, then been submerged by the rising tide.
Felix was waiting for Kelter and brooding. He’d been beaten by inferior druids. He cursed himself. He’d been so surprised by the leviathan strike, then so busy marshalling his men to get the ship back to Gaul–and by Neptune it had been a close thing–that he hadn’t struck back. He could have killed a few captives and used the power to stop the hearts of the men on the boat–he was the stronger druid, he was sure–but by the time revenge had crossed his mind they were too far away.
But why had Lowa sent those druids and not Spring to attack him? Was she holding the girl back? Or had Spring sunk Caesar’s armada to the north with a thousand whales? It was possible. He shook his head. He hoped not. If Caesar was killed and his army drowned, then Felix’s scheme for ruling the world would need a major rethink.
Meanwhile, he was stuck here in Gaul, or at least his demons were. He’d sent some Leathermen north, in case Caesar had left any ships behind, but they’d returned without finding any, as he’d known they would.
He summoned Kelter.
“You called, boss?” asked Kelter, jogging up unmasked and smiling. In the setting sun his carbuncles shone virulently red and oozed disgusting yellow.
“You are going to kill one captive now, then row me and two captives to Britain in the ship’s tender,” he said.
“Sure,” smiled Kelter, “but why aren’t we all going?”
“Because there are no fucking ships and we’ve got to go and get one!”
“Let’s go!”
“Right. Get the captives tied in the boat, and take your leather armour off but bring it with you.”
“Why?”
“The captives? To fuel your rowing.”
“No, why not wear my armour?”
“Because you’ll need it in Britain, but your rowing will be more efficient if you’re unimpeded.” And, thought Felix, watching your muscles flex will give me something to do on the journey.
“Yeah, good point.”
Felix smiled.
Yilgarn Craton found it easy to avoid the British sentries because he was one of them. He said he was off to check defences southwards and stole along the channel separating the Roman spit from the mainland. He congratulated himself on moving like a particularly stealthy shadow despite his muscular bulk. Dunes along the nearside of the spit hid the invaders’ camp from view, but he could hear the yells, hammering and sawing that had been growing in volume since Lowa’s ignominious retreat had gifted the Romans a beachhead.
When he was sure that no Britons were watching–their attention was focused on the Roman side of the channel anyway–he slipped into the water. He bobbed, aware that both sets of sentries might have slung a stone or shot an arrow into him at any moment. What he was doing was incredibly dangerous, but he was incredibly brave, plus Jocanta had asked him to do it. He would have cut his own hands off if she’d asked him to. He set off, his mind so engaged trying to work out how one might cut off both one’s own hands that he was on the other side and out of the water in what seemed like no time.
You’d need someone else to help yo
u, he concluded as he reached the top of the dune and saw the Roman camp. Well, they’d been busy. In their short time on British soil they’d build an entire town, wall and ditch included. What an efficient lot! Men after his own heart; and Jocanta’s, she liked efficiency. She was right to throw the Haxmite lot in with this crowd–even more so now that Lowa had killed a Haxmite for some paltry offence, and then had the gall to tell Yilgarn to keep his men under control. He’d see her regret her lack of respect.
Either side of the camp, warships were drawn up onto the beach like a row of forts. Moonlight lit up the points of the huge arrows on scorpions lining their sides. The transports–more boats than Yilgarn had ever seen in one place–were moored a hundred paces out, silhouettes on the silvery sea.
He set off down the dune with his hands in the air. He’d gone three paces when someone very nearby shouted something which made him jump. He stopped, guessing that the shout had meant “Halt!” In about three blinks of an eye, a dozen legionaries had appeared from Bel knew where, all pointing spears at him. He’d heard that the Romans in Gaul were used to people surrendering, so surely they’d understand his intentions and not run him through?
They did understand. In fact they looked rather bored as they patted him down for hidden weapons, then gestured at him with their spears to follow them. They were small men, about Yilgarn’s height, but all added together they didn’t have as much muscle on their limbs as he did. He could have taken the lot of them, no problem, but he was following Jocanta’s orders so he did what he was told, holding his chin high to that his captors would know that he was an impressive man, not to be messed with, and that he was walking into their camp at spear point very much on his own terms.
They marched through a gateway that bisected the cleanly constructed ditch, wall and palisade, then past rows of freakishly well-ordered, identical tents. A legionary pulled open the flap of one tent–how by Dwyn he could tell one from another, Yilgarn had no idea–and the others gestured with their spears for him to enter. He found more guard types and a table behind which sat a man wearing a ridiculous plumed helmet. The Gaulish tongue was nearly the same as the British one and the cockerel-headed soldier could speak Gaulish, or at least he thought he could. He was about as linguistically skilled as a four-year-old and he had a stupid staccato accent that didn’t help things at all. He asked Yilgarn why he’d come. Yilgarn told him, repeating himself more loudly and clearly until the fool understood. The name Jocanta Fairtresses, chief of the Haxmites, clearly carried some weight even with the Romans, because the feather-headed fellow himself stood up and asked Yilgarn to follow him to meet Julius Caesar.
Yilgarn was led through the dizzyingly regular camp to a tent bigger than the Haxmite longhouse, and ushered in.
Because his own hair was so thick, black and curly, or possibly because he was a sympathetic man, Yilgarn always felt sorry for men who’d lost the hair from the top of their heads. The poor blighters had such difficult choices! They could carry on growing it from the back of their heads, which made them look old, they could shave it all off, which made them look thuggish, or they could comb the remaining hair over in an attempt to look hirsute which had never fooled anyone in the history of hairstyling. Julius Caesar, leader of the Romans and scourge of the Gauls, had chosen the latter method, which put Yilgarn at ease. It was hard to respect a man who looked like such a tit. He was tall, though, much taller than Yilgarn, as were all his black-clad guards. Those guys had some muscle. Nothing like Yilgarn’s, though. He could have taken the lot of them.
Caesar spoke some gibberish in Latin. It reminded Yilgarn of a babbling child.
“Caesar bids you welcome,” said the very tall and polished-looking young Roman next to the general, in faultless Island of Angels British, “and asks you to tell him who you are and why you have come here?”
Yilgarn told him, not sure whether to address the general or the translator. He settled for half and half.
He’d been concerned that the Romans wouldn’t be interested in the help of the Haxmite tribe. He’d heard that they all were arrogant, effete little toffs with no time for real men like him. But they listened to him patiently as he told them all about Lowa’s shameful attack on Jocanta Fairtresses, asked him questions that showed how well they understood Jocanta’s grievances and generally treated him with the dignity he deserved. It was very, very different from the way Lowa Flynn had behaved towards him and his chief. (By Makka, if Lowa hadn’t confused him with that one-handed trick, he’d have driven her to pain town in a cart made of agony, he really would have done.)
He left a long time later. The legionaries escorted him back to the channel, not at spear point this time. He swam across, climbed out unseen, stripped and wrung out his wet clothes, then marched back to camp, arms swinging, like the hero that he was.
“I do not understand,” said Labienus back in Caesar’s tent, “why these barbarians surrender so easily. Have they no pride?”
“Caesar has noticed,” said Caesar, “that man will loathe his mild-mannered neighbour a great deal more fiercely than he will loathe a mass murderer whom he has never met. This childlike, irrational trait is stronger in barbarians. Given the chance and an excuse, he will slit the throat of a man he has known all his life, all due to some wrongly perceived slight from years before. So, Queen Lowa cut off this Yilgarn Craton’s chief’s hair–showing more clemency than Caesar would have done given the circumstances–and as a result Craton is prepared to deliver all of Britain, knowing that Caesar will enslave its people. This is why Romans rule and the brutish barbarians are their slaves.”
Ragnall coughed.
“You are different, Ragnall, because you have learnt Roman ways. Your years among the Romans have improved you more than you can imagine. It is these improvements that Caesar brings to the barbarians. A few generations from now and these brutes, or at least their upper ranks, will be human.”
“Indeed,” nodded Labienus, “and moving on to matters martial, shall I have the men ready to march inland and fight at dawn?”
“No,” said Caesar. “We hold here.”
Labienus looked as if he was about to say something else, but he was silenced by the general’s raised eyebrow.
Chapter 8
“And how long have you been mulling this plan around in your mind?” asked Dug. “Actually, make that mulling it around in your arse. This plan’s been nowhere near anybody’s mind.”
Spring shook her head. Being dead had not helped Dug’s analytical powers. “I’d have thought it was pretty clear. I ended the last war by killing one good man and thousands of other people. I’m going to end this one by killing one man who deserves it. Isn’t this better?”
“Aye, if would be it you could do it, but you can’t. You’ll get yourself, Sadist and Pig Fucker killed, or worse.”
“What’s worse than being killed? And it’s Pigsy and Sadie now.”
But Dug was gone again. Guiltily, Spring felt a little glad. Her plan was full of holes and she didn’t want anyone making her look into them. She just wanted to get it done. She crept through the night, grateful for the clouds scudding across the moon. Darting from cover to cover in the spells of moon shade, she skirted the perimeter of British watchers, her dogs padding quietly behind and lying silently when she paused.
There was only one path through the marsh that led to the beach, but Spring had spent whole days hunting waterfowl around the island of Mearhold, so was undaunted by wading through the morass’s reputedly impassable muddy channels, her bow and hammer held aloft. The dogs took a little persuasion, but in the end they followed her, swimming when they could and dragging themselves unhappily through the mud when they couldn’t.
Muddy, damp and cold, Spring peered through bushes at the edge of the beach, and silently asked Makka the god of war and Dwyn the god of tricks for inspiration. She needed it. She was near enough the Roman camp to hit a man in the eye with an arrow, but she might as well have been in a box at the bottom of
the sea, the amount of chance she had of shooting Caesar. Since landing earlier that day the busy little Italian men had built a walled and ditched town flanked by heavily armed, beached ships; six facing her, five on the camp’s far side. The oversized tips of scorpion arrows poked from the sides of each ship. Whatever else people said about the Romans–and she’d heard plenty–they did not muck about.
She’d imagined that the Roman camp would be more like, well, a camp, a collection of bivouacs and tents with Caesar strutting about in full view, giving commands and arranging crucifixions. That had been naïve, she realised. She could see a few guards on the palisade, and some people on the ships, but of the Roman general there was no sign, and she didn’t imagine that he was about to walk out of the camp just to see if there were any assassins who wanted to take a pop.
Pigsy shuffled behind her.
“Shush!” she whispered.
Lowa found Maggot some way back from the beach, sitting next to Hardward on a log by a fire. Both had their hands cupped around steaming clay mugs. Maggot was wagging his finger and talking as Hardward nodded, but he stopped when Lowa came within earshot and said:
“Ah, Lowa, let me get you some tea! It’ll make you happy and it’ll make you pee.” Hardward nodded hello as if he hadn’t been such a dickhead earlier in the day.
“No, thanks. Do you know where Spring is?” Lowa wanted someone to join her firing arrows up and over into the Roman camp, and Spring was the only other person capable. That’s what she was telling herself, anyway. It wasn’t because she wanted to make amends.
“She went north then west with her dogs shortly after sunset. She thought she was sneaking off.”
“Where was she going?”
“I don’t know. To look at the Romans?”
Lowa shook her head. The girl was a liability.