The Wall at the Edge of the World

by Damion Hunter

  Postumus weighed his dog-eared copy of Dioscorides’s Herbal, trying to decide whether it would be of more use here where he would have the leisure to read it, or in the surgery where he was more likely to need it… and to decide how much to say. Finally, he said, “That’s my brother Justin. He has a regiment of Thracian cavalry. I was inclined to medicine myself, probably because I had an uncle who was a surgeon. He let me help him when he retired and went into village practice.”

  “Do you know,” Valerian said, and Postumus couldn’t tell whether he thought that was the whole story or not, “I’ve watched a good surgeon work, and it strikes me that there might be more to knowing what’s wrong with a man, and seeing your way to fixing it, than there is to hacking a hole in him for his own surgeons to put right.”

  “Don’t overestimate us,” Postumus said. He folded his spare dress tunic and laid it in the clothes chest in the next room. “We can close wounds, but we don’t know what else is going on inside a man most of the time, and if he dies his shade can’t tell us. A lot of knowledge goes up in the smoke of a burned corpse.”

  “I suppose that’s an unholy opinion, but I can’t disagree,” Valerian said. “I don’t see how it’s all right to kill them but not to look inside afterwards. My maternal grandfather had a whole pile of his enemies’ skulls stacked up like so many melons in his hall. And nothing fearsome happened to him as a result, except maybe for the skulls’ relatives now and again. And the Egyptians, now, they hadn’t any such laws until we came along and they know more about anatomy than anyone.”

  “Of course, they’re still prescribing fried mice for a toothache,” Postumus said. That had been one of the more esoteric remedies found in Licinius’s library.

  “What?” Valerian looked revolted.

  “Drop by next time a tooth hurts,” Postumus said, sorting undertunics, “and I’ll fry you one. I need to look up whether you swallow it or just pack it on like a poultice.”

  “I’d wear it for an amulet maybe,” Valerian said, “but that’s as far as I’d go. Or it might be an offering. That would make more sense. Is there a god that likes mice?”

  “Bastet, I should think,” Postumus said. “And this is why I don’t talk shop with people.”

  VI. Galt

  He held his first sick parade the next morning, a motley assortment of coughs, sniffles, pulled tendons, malingering, and a young Dacian cavalryman with a swollen jaw who eyed the surgeon dubiously, his commander having solemnly passed on this piece of ancient Eastern wisdom.

  Postumus got out his forceps and dosed the cavalryman, who looked as if he would clearly have preferred the mouse at that point, with enough poppy tears to take the edge off.

  “Hold him still, please.” The burly orderly got a good grip and Postumus wiggled the abscessed tooth loose and gave it a good yank before the cavalryman could change his mind. Lucian and Gemellus, the other junior surgeon, watched appreciatively.

  The patient howled and slumped in his chair while Postumus reflected that speed was probably the most important talent a surgeon could develop. He drained the abscessed cavity, rolled a ball of lint in a saucer of honey and packed the sticky mixture into it. “You’ll do fine. Stick to soup for a couple of days and try to swallow on the other side of your mouth. If you let any food get in there and rot, it’ll abscess all over again.”

  Postumus stuck his instruments’ blades down in a jar of vinegar and signaled to the orderly to clean up the mess. He wanted to talk to Lucian and Gemellus and get a sense of which of them he should send to the frontier. Lucian was the steadier of them, he thought. Gemellus was younger and appeared to be possessed of obvious good intentions and very little skill. Postumus would have to do something about that after the campaign was over, but for the time being, Gemellus was probably better off in Eburacum. The three of them were going over supply lists with the hospital optio when there was a discreet cough at the office door and a sentry stuck his head around it.

  “Excuse me, sir, but there’s a Briton at the gate, insisting that he’s got to see the new surgeon. We tried to shoo him off, but he won’t go.”

  “From the town?” As Licinius had said, a military surgeon spent a lot of time treating the civilian population. It helped promote peaceable relations.

  “No, sir, a tribesman from off in the hills somewhere. Tattoos on his face and he smells like a goat.”

  “Well, I expect you’re no nosegay to him either. Every tribe has its own smell—you just don’t notice your own.” The sentry looked indignant. “Never mind. Bring him into the surgery.” Postumus rose, nodding to Lucian to follow him. “Always keep your doors open to the local folk.”

  A double escort of sentries produced the Briton, and stood in the doorway, arms folded. Postumus raised an eyebrow at them. “Surely you don’t think he’ll try to take the fortress single-handed?”

  “No, sir, but we don’t want him nosing round either. He’s a Brigante and they’ve been trouble since Claudius Caesar came.”

  The Brigantes had begun the war that had wrecked the Ninth Hispana. Postumus took a closer look at the man. He was tall and his woolen shirt and breeches covered the heavily muscled body of a fighter. His cheekbones were tattooed with intricate blue patterns that marked him as a warrior, and his mustache and fair hair were bleached almost white after the fashion of some of his tribe. He regarded the surgeon with an almost equal reluctance.

  “I am sent,” he said in the tones of one who would not otherwise have set foot in a Roman camp if the hounds of Erebus had been after him.

  His speech was akin to that of the southern tribes and Postumus understood him fairly well. “To what purpose? You look well enough to me.”

  “We have heard in the heather that there is a new healer in the fort of the Eagles, one with more skill than the old one, and who is native-born and will understand what is said to him.”

  “Your sources are remarkably accurate, considering that I only arrived yesterday. What do you want with me?”

  “I am sent,” the man repeated, as if to disavow any agreement with whatever was afoot. “I am to take you back with me if you are the one we have heard of.”

  Postumus was beginning to feel a little out of his depth. “Have you no healers of your own?”

  “There is one with a leg that does not heal. And because he is a harper and a great warrior, the High King has said that he is to have the Roman healer if he wants him.” The messenger’s expression made it clear that he wouldn’t want him.

  The High King. The patient was someone of importance then, and harpers generally commanded a good deal of respect. A look at the inner councils of the Brigantes was an opportunity that might never come again, and could well be useful. Or so Postumus told himself, well aware in the moment that if it had been any other tribe he would not have been as interested. But they practically made a habit of rebellion, as the sentry noted, and the governor had left a lot of deserted forts behind him in their territory. There was surgical staff available, from the Second Augusta at Isca and the Twentieth out of Deva, to man the governor’s field hospitals, and he was sending them Lucian. Postumus made a decision.

  “Very well, I will come, if my legate agrees. You must understand, of course, that I must take an escort with me and that any, uh, accidents which might befall me would have very dangerous consequences.”

  “We are warriors,” the man said coldly. “We fight only warriors. But as to the escort, that is agreed.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, having consulted with the legate and received a list of things concerning the Brigantes which the legate burned to know, they careened along the northern road through a rolling landscape at once wilder and more open than that of West Britain. Postumus braced himself against the rock and sway of the messenger’s chariot, a medical kit with everything he could think of that he might need at his feet. The Britons built their chariots of wickerwork and leather, lithe, whippy things that could handle the roughest road, or none at a
ll. Postumus had ridden in them from childhood, and even driven one in the highly amateur competition on Race Day at Isca, and could appreciate the skill required to keep it upright and drive the two highly strung ponies that pulled it.

  Behind them clattered a dozen of Valerian’s Dacian cavalry, resplendent in polished scale and red and yellow saddle trappings, with their helmet plumes nodding in the wind. He could have ridden with them, of course, but there was some high ground to be gained, he thought, by proving that he could remain on his feet in his escort’s chariot.

  Past Isurium Brigantum, the nominal tribal capital of the Brigantes, they swung off the main road onto a lesser track that led north and west into the low hills. Isurium still housed the official king’s hall of the tribe, but it was a thriving Roman colonia these days, and for many years the High King had seen fit to take his principal residence elsewhere. By the terms of the twenty-five-year-old treaty, official business was conducted at Isurium, and the king kept council there for a specified number of days each year, but it was suspected that the real business of the tribe went on well away from the eyes of Rome.

  Postumus looked about him with interest. This was farther north than he had ever been, a wild blue-green landscape of open moors and rolling hills bright with poppies, building to a central range that formed the spine of Britain. A curlew wheeled on the air currents above him, its thin haunting cry barely audible above the hoofbeats.

  They halted for the night at the edge of a small meadow where there was graze for the horses and an outcrop of rock to shelter a makeshift camp. Valerian’s Dacians were well trained. They threw up a short line of ditch and earthwork on the exposed flank of the camp and posted two of their number as pickets. The Brigante warrior watched them sardonically.

  “I have told you, the escort is for your own pride only. None will offer harm to one who rides at the High King’s word. And if they did, a ditch isn’t likely to stop them.”

  If this was a tribe supposedly at peace with Rome, no wonder the legate was nervous.

  “No, but it shortens the odds somewhat,” Postumus said. “They are warriors also.”

  “And not, I think, of the Roman kind.”

  “No, they are Dacians, a province far to the east of Rome. A highly skilled horse people who provide some of Rome’s best cavalry.” In truth, the native Roman standard of horsemanship in general was so abysmal that the Army generally relied on the Empire’s allies and provinces to make up its cavalry, but Postumus saw no need to mention that.

  The Briton watched as the Dacians loosed their horses into a makeshift corral staked out in the long grass and then turned to their own dinner of military biscuits and shreds of dried meat from their saddlebags.

  “I will return,” the Briton said shortly, and disappeared into the tangle of undergrowth behind him before Postumus had a chance to speak.

  “I don’t like that.” The decurion in charge of the escort dropped down into the Briton’s place, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “What if he’s just gone to let ’em know we’re set up like ducks on a pond?”

  “I doubt it,” Postumus said placidly, fishing in his own kit for a piece of barley bannock and a sack of dried plums. “Surgeons aren’t in great demand as battle trophies.” He remembered the Britons’ aversion to cereal as a dietary staple. “I expect he’s just gone to look for dinner.”

  The decurion snorted. “The commander says ‘don’t trust anyone,’ and I don’t trust that one.” He applied himself to a handful of rock-hard squares of military bread, pausing every so often to inspect the hillside slope behind him. He rose up some time later, sword in hand, when the Briton returned, catfooted and silent, with a hare in one hand and a light throw-spear in the other, then sat again, grudgingly impressed.

  The Briton settled a few paces away, and began to skin the hare with easy, professional strokes. Having gutted the carcass, he selected a forked branch with some care, sharpened the ends, and jabbed the hare onto the prongs. He adjusted it over the campfire without comment, and squatted down beside while it cooked.

  It was full dark now, with a thin horned moon hanging low over the hill and the night sounds of the country beginning to start up. The meadow was alive with the chirp and whirr of insects and the rustle of field mice. The faint hoo-hoo of an owl sounded from the wood behind them. On the far hill, a wolf signaled the awakening of the wild lands to the night’s business.

  The nights were still fairly warm in late summer, and Postumus slipped his cloak back from his shoulders. This part of Britain was alien to him, a wild and untamed world as far from the green hills and river valleys of his youth as the blistering heat of Syria had been; a country where Rome’s hold was still precarious and the power of the barbarians made the civilization of the southern territories seem unstable. A shadow swooped silently over them, sank into the meadow and rose again with a mouse in its grip.

  * * *

  In the morning they were off again along the ancient track into the hills that had been a path of the first peoples of Britain before the forefathers of the Brigantes had come north across the Channel. Small villages of round, thatch-roofed huts appeared now and then along the way. At mid-morning they trotted up a banked track that switchbacked along a steep hillside and through the first of three gates to a holding perched on a sharp rise above heather- and bracken-covered slopes. Three rings of turf wall topped with stone encircled it, with turf-roofed timber huts, storage sheds, and cow byres within the walls. Reinforced timber gates between stone gateposts led through the last wall into the inner courtyard. Even this space was large enough to draw the whole clan in from the outer villages. A besieging army would have a hard time.

  A group of children at spear practice beneath the inner wall regarded their arrival wide-eyed until the weapons master brought their attention back to business with a sharp word. It was obvious that they were expected, if not welcome.

  Their taciturn guide drew rein before the main hall, a timber building of respectable size, surrounded by kitchens, a pony shed, and a smithy. The cavalry escort, Postumus noted, was attracting attention. The troopers sat self-consciously in formation while two elderly men lounging beside the well eyed them balefully. A trio of women just turning from the right side of the main hall stopped short, whispered, and then burst into laughter.

  “Evan!” the driver called, and a small sandy-haired boy skittered up, eyes bright with excitement. “See to my team, and to the surgeon’s watchdogs.”

  The decurion of the escort drew his horse up beside the chariot and bent down, as conspicuous as a tropical bird. “Hadn’t I better stay with you, sir?”

  “No. I rather think this is to be a private audience,” Postumus said.

  “Very well, sir.” The decurion’s glance strayed upward to where a grinning skull adorned the lintel of the hall. “It’s your head.”

  “I fervently hope not,” Postumus said, thinking of Valerian’s grandfather. “Go along, Decurion. They didn’t drag me all the way out here just to start a war. There are plenty of easier ways.”

  The decurion saluted and signaled his troops and they moved away in parade formation behind the sandy-haired urchin as a flock of chickens clucked and grumbled themselves out of their path. Postumus picked up his medical kit and followed the driver into the hall.

  In the shadowed and smoky depths, ill-lit by one open window, two figures came into focus. The younger wore a shirt of soft dyed leather decorated with a complication of interlocking knots and spirals that echoed the patterns pricked into the flesh above the open neck of his shirt and the triple spiral on his forehead. A finely wrought circlet of gold shone against his corn-colored hair, a gold torque encircled his throat, and a heavy ring set with an enormous uncut emerald gleamed dully on his right hand. The driver bowed to him, and he nodded, but his gray eyes regarded Postumus without expression. Bran, High King of the Brigantes. It was unlikely that he was anyone else.

  The other, a man in his forties, sat with his leg propped
on a stool on the banked hearth before him, and a blanket over his lap. He had a delicate fine-boned face that must have been beautiful as a girl’s in his youth and his mustache and the hair that fell about his shoulders had been carefully bleached. He wore a drop of amber in one ear and a torque of gold and carnelian around his neck, and both arms were clasped with enameled gold bands of intricate workmanship. His face was slightly flushed beneath the tattooing on his cheeks, and he was wrapped in a cloak of green and brilliant blue. He directed a level gaze at Postumus and said, “My thanks to you, Healer of the Eagles. I am grateful for your presence. Although the High King my fosterling—” he nodded at the younger man “—would have it that I grow foolish with age.” There was a note in his voice that was obviously meant for the king.

  “The god’s greeting to you, and to you, Lord of the Brigantes,” Postumus said, setting himself to be polite. “May the sun shine always on your path and the winds blow softly about your door.” He made a formal bow.

  “The winds that blew in with the Roman kind,” the High King said, “have ever carried evil on their wings.” He turned to the other. “Galt, if you are determined that a Roman knife can do what our priests cannot, I will leave you to it.” He stalked out, taking the driver with him.

  “Bran has little reason to love the Roman,” the elder man observed. “Yet I still carry a certain amount of weight in some things. Enough to get a Roman healer when I want him.”

  “I am senior surgeon to the Sixth Legion Victrix,” Postumus said. “But I expect you know that. Your messenger seemed remarkably well-informed.”

  “I have a liking for new information,” Galt said. “And there is always news blowing in the heather.” Postumus wondered what particular wind had blown through Eburacum with his posting on it.

  “What is the matter with you?”

  “A boar’s tusk rammed halfway up my thigh.” He winced and pulled the blanket away so that the shaft of sun from the window fell on his bandaged leg. “But see for yourself.”