by Angus Watson
On top of all this, since the day was hot, the Celermen and Maximen who weren’t on guard were naked. Other than the pustules all over the Celermen’s heads, they were fine specimens of leanly fit and very muscular young men. Felix thought they looked fantastic strutting about free from their armour, but the Roman army’s view was that male nudity should be left to the perverted Greeks.
“Follow. Caesar will talk to you somewhere that does not stink like the latrines of Hades and looks like a Spartan’s wet dream.” He strode away.
Felix trotted behind the general’s long stride across the beach and out on to a grassy spur that probed the wide estuary. The day was still. Sun sparked off the sea and Caesar’s gold-plated armour, and seabirds glided lethargically overhead. Felix hoped that enough supplies had come from Gaul and it was time, finally, to stop dallying. The sooner they conquered this backward land, the sooner Felix could reveal his plans and stop chasing after Caesar’s toga tail.
As they arrived at the end of the spit, the faint echoes of a shout drifted across the water.
“What was that?” asked Caesar.
“You have good ears. It was a British shout reporting our position. I’ve searched for the shouters but they are tiresomely competent at concealing themselves and we haven’t winkled any out yet. They’re also good at throwing their voices in certain directions, so we hear them only out here when the wind is in the south or west.”
“How do these shouters operate?”
Felix told the general about the network of shouters set up by Zadar to yell messages across the country, how they could direct their voices, use codes to cut certain areas out of a shout, and so on.
Caesar nodded throughout with uncharacteristic patience, and when he was finished said: “You will use the speed and stealth of your Celermen to capture as many of these shouters as you can. Bring them unharmed to Caesar.”
“We will try.”
“You will do.”
“Sorry, yes, of course.”
“Do they have an emergency shout, to inform the network that they are captured?”
“Yes, I think they do.”
“Ensure that none are able to make this shout.”
“That will be difficult.”
“Yes.”
“But it will be done,” Felix added.
“Good. Now, the legions are marching west,” said Caesar. “You will shadow the army to the north, keeping contact through your man Bistan.”
“Bistan is missing.”
“How careless, but no matter, any of your Celermen will do, it is not a taxing duty. Ensure they come at night. The British are dug into a fortified position some hundred and fifty miles west of our beachhead. Scouts report a barren country between here and there. You should not meet any opposition. Caesar will continue to send you those who meet his displeasure to fuel your troops. He commands you to remember that these are Romans and our allies, and should be treated as such. Are these men being fed?”
“Yes,” lied Felix. When food was scarce, why feed doomed men? If they needed to march he would give them sustenance, however.
“Good. Now fetch Caesar’s horse. He will never again come within two miles of your mephitic camp.”
Lowa leant on the north-east wall of Saran Fort, next to the high, intertwined banks and gates which made up the eastern entrance. There were no clouds, the moon had not yet risen and the bright stars stretched from one wide horizon to the other. She wasn’t normally given to whimsy, but so brilliant and enveloping were the stars that she could almost feel that she was up among them, floating and free from the terrible burden of responsibility she bore for those who’d already died and for those who were going to.
The smell of smoke and the background carousing of her army kept her thoughts anchored to the earth. The aroma of freshly cut wood from the new gates reminded her of the day that the old gates had been destroyed, when Zadar had sacked the place. She remembered it well. The double walls had been high but rampart-free and so collapsed that a horse could charge up them. Zadar’s Fifty, his elite cavalry to which Lowa had recently been elevated, had ridden up the first wall, through a shallow point of the ditch and onto the interior wall. They’d galloped around the edge and shot arrows into the fort until the defenders surrendered. It had been fun, an exciting sport. She hadn’t considered for a moment that these were real people with families and lives that she was spitting with iron and wood. Her only concern back then had been her own and her sister’s survival.
And now here she was, back in the same place, striving for the survival of every tribe on the island. The links between geography and time, she mused, were often odd. People changed and the land remained.
Over the last two years Mal had restored and enhanced the fort so that it might be their headquarters if Caesar marched inland. If this fort were breached then they’d retreat to Maidun Castle’s superior defences; assuming that retreat was possible and there was anybody left to retreat.
Saran’s ditches were now deeper and steeper and full of spikes and devices that would stop cavalry doing what Zadar’s had done a decade earlier, and Mal had topped both the outer and inner walls with broad wooden palisades. It was now a decent fort.
Thinking of Mal, Lowa sighed. Shouters reported that his raid had thinned the demons’ numbers. His attack had to be considered a success, even if all those who took part had perished. As commander of the army, she was grateful for his sacrifice. But she grieved for him as a friend.
“You’ve still got me,” said Dug, leaning on the spiked palisade next to her.
“I wish I had.”
“I live on in the people whose lives I’ve affected. Since my death wiped out three armies with horrible intentions, that’s pretty much everyone in Britain forever. But, most strongly and importantly, it’s you and Spring.”
“Well, that’s great, but I still wish you were here. Spring, too. What is she doing? Is she even alive?”
“She’s all right, and you’ll see her again.”
“There’s no sign of her.”
“You’ll see her soon.”
“There’s no sign of the dozen riders that I sent to the Aurochs tribe to find out what the Bel had happened to Atlas either.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What can I do? There’s something going on in the forest of Branwin, enough to detain Atlas and twelve of my best troops. I’ve sent twenty more today because I want those aurochs. I’d like to have sent greater numbers, but I need them here to face the Romans. All I can do is hope that Atlas is alive, because if he is, I know he’ll be doing every bloody thing he can to bring us those beasts.
“What’s your plan with Caesar?”
“I hoped he’d take the message of one legion and half his fleet destroyed, and no food or people for hundreds of miles and piss off back to Gaul. He hasn’t, though. He’s on his way here.”
“Determined fucker.”
“Isn’t he?”
“Reminds me of someone.” Dug grinned.
“According to the shouters, the demons and the elephants are still at the coast. The five or six legions he’s marched inland are almost double our numbers, and they have more training and vastly more experience. But we’ve been training hard ourselves, we’ve got some good ideas—”
“All of them mine.”
“Some of them yours. Plus we know the land and we have more to fight for. So I think we can win. I just hope the demons and the elephants stay where they are. I guess he’s left them behind because he wants all the glory to go to the legions. I think that’s why he called the demons back at Big Bugger Hill. That suits me, I’d much rather fight men. Chamanca has a plan to defeat the elephants, but I’d rather they stayed away until I’ve worked out what’s happening with the aurochs. And the demons? We’re chipping away at them but it’s costing a lot of lives and even then we’ve been lucky. Properly commanded, I think they could defeat both Roman and British armies on their own.”
“Maybe Caesar’s scared of them himself? Maybe that’s why he’s left them back east?”
“Maybe. I hope so.”
They stood without talking for a while, listening to the cries and squawks of nocturnal animals outside the walls the noises from and within the camp.
“Dug,” said Lowa eventually, “when I die, will I be with you?”
He didn’t answer. He was gone.
Chapter 2
The cavalry was comprised of men from a range of places including Italy, Iberia, Illyricum, Helvetia, Asia, Sicilia and Gaul. They accepted Ragnall more readily and treated him more civilly than the Roman legionaries ever had, even though he’d been preoccupied and less than chatty.
In a squad with fifteen others, he rode along valleys, through woods and over hills, searching for supplies. They found only deserted farms and empty villages. The Britons had stripped every grain of barley from the stores, every piece of fruit from the trees and bushes, every bucket and rope from every well. Even the wildlife seemed to have deserted the land. It was eerie, with not so much as the grunt of a pig or the tweet of a robin to pierce the silence.
The desolation suited Ragnall’s mood. Caesar’s idea of him gaining confidence to be his own man had sounded great at the time but instead, riding between fruitless searches of buildings and stores, he had even more time to brood about how much others had ruined his life. Drustan’s idea of achieving something was all well and good, but all this riding around was achieving nothing. His hatred of Spring and Lowa grew anew as he considered all the things that had gone wrong for him because of them. His yearning for their deaths was rekindled and, as dreary day followed dreary day, it burnt stronger than ever before.
When he wasn’t wishing death on Spring and Lowa, he thought about becoming king, and decided that he’d be a good one. His plans for rule had so far been selfish and he would change them. He’d still have a palace built, but a smaller one than he’d first imagined, no larger than the palaces in Rome. He would be under Rome’s control, he had no illusions about that any more, but not entirely. He’d told his friend Publius back while campaigning in Gaul that he hoped that Britain’s songs and stories and way of life would be preserved, while incorporating the myriad advantages of Roman culture. As king, he would ensure that happened. He pictured British men in splendid, newly built baths, singing the old songs and bards composing new ones to praise their king.
The cavalry rode on, enthusiasm for the search dwindling ever further as they realised that they were never going to find anything. It didn’t really matter. Extra supplies would have been useful, but there was plenty of food and other supplies coming from Gaul. The fleet might have been depleted but it rowed and sailed back and forth night and day, fully laden on each return journey. The effectiveness and efficiency of the Romans was simply astonishing, and soon Ragnall would be using it to benefit Britain. Sooner, if they weren’t following already, Caesar’s six legions would be fully stocked up and would advance in the wake of the scouts.
“It is five legions, truly,” a fellow cavalryman from Asia told him one day as they rode along the man-made bank that bisected a wide, lifeless marsh. The man spoke in passable if oddly phrased Latin: “The British kill one whole legion with fire. Thousands of man burnt.”
“But we still have six legions…?”
“Troops moved from other five legions, so to pretend we have six. Gone legion, bad morale.”
Ragnall nodded. It was probably at least partly true, knowing Caesar. When he was king, Ragnall resolved that he, too, would have the courage to change the story of the past to improve the present and the future. First of all, he’d remove any mention of Lowa from all the bards’ repertoires.
Shouters had told Lowa of the Romans’ progress all the way, so it was no shock when the Roman army marched into sight. According to her network, the elephants and demons still hadn’t budged from the coast, which was something of a surprise, but a welcome one.
Lowa pulled everyone back into the fort. It was busy within the walls, but it wasn’t cramped, largely thanks to innovations of Dug’s which Mal had implemented. There were strange-looking three-storey longhouses which housed the men and women of the army, and astonishingly deep storage pits shored all the way around with timber to prevent collapse. She hadn’t seen Dug since they’d discussed the aurochs. In the quiet nights she missed him. In the days she was too busy–and still exasperated about where the Bel Atlas and the aurochs could be. She’d sent more scouts and shouters to the forest of Branwin. None of them had returned. Had the elephants been coming, she would have send a larger force or perhaps even gone herself to investigate the hold-up, but, with the African animals still camped on the Channel coast, she had more pressing concerns.
The entire Roman army camped on the Downs Road directly north of Saran Fort that night. Before dawn the next day, instead of swinging south from the Downs Road and besieging her with all six legions, Caesar sent one legion south and marched on with the other five. His intention was clearly to pin her in place while he searched for supplies. In a few days’ march, he would indeed find land that she hadn’t stripped and evacuated. If he was very lucky, or, more likely, if he tortured some locals, he would find the huge caches of food taken from Britain’s south-west corner. So the latest Roman strategy was a good one.
However, she had a good reply to it.
Lowa watched as the single legion began to dig its camp. She waited until she heard from shouters that the other five legions were still marching away, and she told her captains to prepare the army. She waited until late morning, when shouts confirmed that the five other legions were well clear to the north. Then she gave the order to leave Saran Fort and attack.
Chapter 3
Atlas trudged along the path that curved up the hill to the Aurochs tribe’s village, his Elann-modified axe over one shoulder. He hoped that his slow speed made him look confident, but in truth he couldn’t have gone any faster. Not that he could see anybody around to pass judgement. This time the hill was deserted, neither villagers nor aurochs to be seen. Smoke ascending and the hammering from Elann’s forges hidden in the hollow up to the right were the only signs of life.
When he was three-quarters of the way up the hill, further than he’d walked since Manfreena had laid him low, the Aurochs tribe trooped from the gates in the wooden palisade. His legs felt as if they were made of iron, but he walked on, manoeuvring his axe into position.
The villagers filed left and right, formed a semicircle and waited for Atlas. Manfreena and Ula walked out and stood in the middle. Silently, they all watched his approach. They looked calm, some were smiling. It was unnerving. He would have preferred it if they’d been shouting hatred. As he neared, he recognised some of the smiling spectators as Maidunite cavalry. He guessed that Lowa must have sent them to find him and that the new Aurochs queen had managed to warp their minds.
“Here’s a surprise,” said Manfreena cheerily. “You!” She nodded at a nearby villager. “Go and fetch Elann. I’d like to hear why this walking corpse wasn’t burnt on her forge. Ula, would you mind finishing him off?”
“No problem.” Ula’s smile widened, her eyes flashed and she strode towards him.
Atlas shifted the axe on his shoulder. He’d hoped to get closer than this. He pointed the end of the handle at Manfreena and flicked the release catch. The iron bolt shot from the axe’s shaft, passed through Manfreena’s left ear with a small explosion of blood and flesh, flew between the village’s open gates and disappeared.
“Ah,” said Atlas. In the plan, that bolt hit Manfreena in the narrow gap between her eyes, she died, the glamour fell from the village and that was that.
Ula stopped and looked back at Manfreena. The former queen of Eroo held her hand to the side of her head, felt about with her fingers and found that most of her ear was missing.
She smiled. “Have you got anything else?” she asked.
Atlas dropped his axe and fell to his knees. He didn’t have anyt
hing else. Not even the strength to stand.
“Ula?” said Manfreena.
The queen of Kanawan jogged up and kicked Atlas on the side of the head. He couldn’t block or dodge. He fell, thinking that it was good she was bare-footed. One of Lowa’s iron-heeled kicks would have killed him. On the other hand, he considered as he lay there, this way was going to take longer.
He managed to clamber up on to all fours. He felt more than saw Ula walk around him and pull her leg back. The kick to his stomach lifted him from the ground, turned him over and landed him on his back. By Sobek, he hated magical strength.
He lay where he was. He couldn’t lift his arms or move his legs. He felt Ula kick his feet apart, then walk away. He wondered what she was doing, and did not like his conclusions. It was going to be a running kick to the bollocks, or possibly she was going to leap and come down and mash her knee into his groin. He didn’t relish either idea much. He tried to shuffle his feet back together but he couldn’t.
“Wait a moment, Ula,” he heard Manfreena say. “What’s this coming up the hill?”
Atlas managed to tilt his head so that he could see.
Hobbling on a stick towards them up the road, her white curly hair aglow in the sun like a dandelion-seed ball and with a smile on her face to match the mad cheerfulness of the Aurochs tribe, was Nan.
Chapter 4
The Maidunite infantry streamed out of the fort, formed up into their hundreds and marched towards the growing foundations of the Roman camp. The Romans saw the threat, dropped shovels, picks and other camp-building equipment, snatched up pilums and shields and arranged themselves into battle lines.
“By Juno, it’s exciting, isn’t it?” said Clodia.