The Wall at the Edge of the World

by Damion Hunter

  “How long are you like to be stuck in this heathen outpost, sir?” he inquired.

  “That’s hard to say,” Postumus said. “I want to stay until I’m sure that leg is healing and the local priests aren’t going to let it get infected again out of sheer spite. Are you so anxious to get back to your nice war?”

  “It’s the men I’m thinking of. I can’t take them out for drills in front of the locals and they haven’t anything else to do except sit around getting soft. And the locals don’t like ’em much, which makes for trouble. They make signs behind their backs when they see us. And there’s a damn sight too many women about too, running about with a damn sight too few clothes on.” He nodded toward the open window where a group of girls in short tunics could be seen running through weapons drill with the boys. “All I need is one idiot to stir up a whole hornet’s nest of trouble.”

  “Don’t tell me the girls are giving them the come-on.”

  “Hardly. They’d just as soon spit on us. But my lads aren’t used to women running around like men. They think it means they’re easy.”

  Postumus thought it over. There were all the ingredients necessary for real trouble. “I see what you mean. The legate wants information, as I expect you realize. And they aren’t going to open up around me much with a dozen bodyguards cluttering up the place, not to mention if one of them tries to go after a girl. He’ll probably get killed and then we’ll have a diplomatic crisis all our own. I think you’d better take your men and head back, and let the High King give me an escort back to Eburacum.”

  The decurion looked dubious. “I don’t think the legate’s going to like that, sir. Frankly, we haven’t enough good surgeons as it is.”

  “The legate sent me up here,” Postumus said. “He’s going to have to let me handle it as I see fit. Tell him he can expect me in about two weeks, and he can leave my orders at Eburacum.” He hoped the orders wouldn’t include a posting back to Syria as a camel vet.

  * * *

  Galt, apprised of this change in plan while Postumus re‑dressed his leg, seemed amused. “Are you always so free with your commander’s orders?”

  “The legate has a war in the north to keep him busy. I’m not going to have some damn fool from your men or mine start something that the Army’s going to have to finish, and hand the legate a war on his hearth as well. Your leg is looking much better. If it stays clean tomorrow, I’ll stitch it.”

  “I shall enjoy that, I feel sure.”

  “You won’t, but you’ll have less chance of a permanent limp that way.” Postumus spread a clean cloth over the wound and knotted a bandage lightly around it at either end.

  “You have the healer’s touch, I think,” Galt said. “I find that odd in a people so given to conquest as yours.”

  Postumus rolled the clean dressings and bandages up and thought that one over. “And from whom did your people take this land?” he asked finally. “And in any case, my family have always followed the Eagles. I merely took a different form of the service.”

  “I have heard that your own people in Rome think all physicians are charlatans and that the true healers come from Greece or Egypt,” Galt said idly.

  Postumus raised an eyebrow. Galt seemed an unlikely candidate for such thorough knowledge of the Citizenry’s opinions.

  “We become more worldly-wise,” Galt said, interpreting his reaction correctly, “with each year we live beneath Rome’s hand.”

  “Then you will also know that it is only civilians and the old nobility who think that way, and that that is born of the days when we had no healers of our own,” Postumus said. “For the last two hundred years, almost every advance in surgery has come out of the field hospitals of the Eagles.”

  Galt’s tired eyes watched him narrowly. “A true child of Rome and none of the Iceni, are you not?”

  “I suppose not. Rome is all I’ve ever known. My mother is Roman now, and the Iceni wouldn’t have her back, having no love for Rome themselves. You can’t live in two worlds.”

  “No. Our people tried it once, a hundred years gone, when our own queen made us vassals of Rome. There were those who did not like being sold so, and thus there was a rebellion which was put down by Rome, none too gently. It has been an uneasy balance since.”

  Postumus didn’t answer, thinking of the last time the balance had tipped.

  Galt seemed to know that. “And you are no child anyway, are you? You must forgive me. I see all men of your age as children. A sign I grow old, I expect.”

  “Even the High King?”

  “No,” Galt said slowly. “He is the life of the tribe, and they are the power in him. No man can view a High King as a child. But the High King his father, who was my brother in all but blood, died in a war with your Eagles when this one was a babe in arms.” Galt’s eyes were focused on the middle distance now, on some memory long gone by. “There was a good chance that some of the babe’s kin might not let him live to reign, seeing their own chance, without a strong hand about him—and one with no inclination to the kingship,” he added wryly. “There had been a regency when the High King’s own father, grandsire to this one, died, and it took a tribal war and much blood to win back his birthright. And so we made sure between us that Fate would not spin the same thread for his cub.”

  “And now?”

  “He goes his own way now. And I am glad enough to let the power go with him. A kingship has never been something I wished to take on my own shoulders.”

  Postumus wondered again whether there had been anything but stark duty to hold Galt to the king all those years. It must have been an odd, uncomfortable arrangement on both sides. Still, whatever love or lack of it Galt held the king in, whatever path the High King took, Galt would follow if he couldn’t stop it. Whatever vow he’d made to the old king would hold.

  Postumus packed his ointments away, light from the tallow dips throwing his sharp angled profile into relief on the wall beyond. Galt lay watching him silently until he had rolled up the kit and tied it. “Postumus—” It was the first time any of the Brigantes had called him by name, and he looked up, surprised. “Stay yet awhile tonight.”

  “You should sleep.”

  “I have slept all I can. And I am not going anywhere.”

  “Most certainly you are not, if you wish to keep your leg. But you don’t need me just now.”

  “I am curious. I will make you a bargain. Your left-hand heritage for your Roman one.”

  This man is dangerous, Postumus thought. “To what purpose?” he asked, and chose his words carefully.

  “For you, because you are half Iceni whether your mother is a centurion’s lady or not, and I think that half begins to call to you somewhat.”

  “And for yourself?” Postumus watched the light flickering on the fine-boned face and the pale pool of his hair.

  Galt raised himself up on one elbow. “I find Rome hard to understand. To me, it is a world of straight lines and harsh light, like a thrown brick, crashing into things, but we must understand it if we are to survive.” His blue eyes were narrowed and intent and he caught Postumus with them and held him. “All the Britons were kin to one another when the world was young, but tribe has fought tribe ever since. When your Claudius Caesar first came, we should have united and pushed Rome back across the Channel. And when your general Agricola drove farther into our land, we should have done the same. But we did not, and now it is too late for that. An enemy who comes only to raid and take tribute is one thing. An enemy who has put down his roots in the land, him you must learn to live with, or go under as the Old Folk of the hills did when my people first took their holdings here, as you said. Rome is bred in the bone of too much of Britain now.”

  “We who have put our roots down,” Postumus said, “for us this is our land too.”

  “Then we will talk,” Galt said, “your world and mine.” He smiled tentatively, and Postumus found himself smiling back.

  In the end they talked until the dawn began to slide l
ike a sea mist under the hangings that shielded the room’s one window. Galt spoke of Britain as far back as the tales of his people could recall it, with what he knew of the Old Folk who had come before them thrown in for good measure. And Postumus, who had never seen Rome, tried to explain the gilt and marble magnificence of that city and the ties that bound those born of her far-flung Empire.

  Afterward he took his meals in Galt’s chamber, rather than alone in his own, and the talk went on, confined mainly to such harmless topics as the proper design of a chariot or the intricacies of Roman plumbing, or Postumus’s mad desire to bathe daily in the river, but touching now and again on the cold iron of the Roman presence in Britain, and, more to the point, the evacuation of Rome’s forts in these hills. Postumus was never sure, when that came up, who was sizing up whom.

  As Galt grew stronger, Postumus, whose musical ability extended to the fact that he could generally carry a tune, heard for the first time the music of his mother’s people in the hands of a man who possessed both training and a great gift. There was some old magic in the songs that legend said had first come from the Old People of the hills, Postumus thought, while Galt, his bad leg propped awkwardly on a pillow, took his harp from its embroidered leather case.

  Afterward, Postumus would lie wakeful, staring at the roof beams and counting over the past unsettling days. What the legate needed most to know—the stability of the Brigantes—was still uncertain. Bran regarded him with the cold and unwinking hostility of a basilisk; Rhys, the driver who had brought him, remained polite but aloof; and it was plain that he was an irksome and unwelcome embarrassment in their midst. Dawid, who was the chieftain of the clan whose lands marched nearest to the fort at Eburacum, was friendly enough, but clearly interested only in Postumus’s usefulness. Dawid’s wife Brica, when he encountered her, was briskly pleasant, plainly concerned with Galt’s well-being. She was a small freckled woman with long brown braids and most often her hands full of some task or other, an apron tied over her gown. Like Dawid’s, her clothes were of fine wool embroidered with bright colors, and her belt was sewn with small bronze bells. Constantia would like the little bells, he thought. Except for small Evan, to whom no man was a stranger, the rest of the Brigantes simply ignored him; if the Lord Galt wanted the Roman, that was his business, but they made the Sign of Horns behind their backs when they saw him, and the High King regarded him as he would an adder in his boots.

  Once the stitches had been put in, the leg healed rapidly, to Postumus’s silent relief. He prescribed fresh air and some mild exercise and went along to make sure that Galt didn’t overdo it.

  “You are a surgeon. I do not require that you serve also as a nursemaid,” Galt said somewhat querulously.

  Postumus suspected that the newly healing leg was paining him more than he had bargained for. But when he pointed out irritably that since no one but Galt was willing to tell him which way was north on the best of days, he had little else to do with his time, Galt laughed and shouted for Rhys to harness the black ponies.

  “If I brace my leg thus—” he demonstrated with a chair— “I may ride in state and you be my driver. That is, if you think you can keep them to a walk.”

  Since Postumus was aware that the black ponies were a pair that were used to teach children to drive, he agreed that he probably could. He suspected that it was a compliment to be allowed to drive at all.

  The chariot that Rhys brought was a much finer affair than the one in which he had driven Postumus from Eburacum, and obviously Galt’s own. The wooden framework was painted deep blue and the wicker body was lashed to it with thongs of red leather. Bright medallions of bronze and silver hung along the sides and the wheel spokes had also been inset with bronze. There was an empty socket in either wheel hub and Postumus realized that beneath the fancy trappings this was a war chariot. Those sockets were made to hold the wicked double-bladed knives that could slice right through a man when the wheels were turning.

  The black ponies were biddable enough, having encountered worse drivers than Postumus, and Postumus had schooled enough of Licinius’s ponies and driven enough Race Days to make a fair showing. He said as much to Galt when the harper unexpectedly complimented him.

  “I thought this uncle raised cavalry remounts,” Galt said, eyeing Postumus’s hands on the reins. “I’ve seen some fancy tricks with burning hedges and the like, but never a cavalry pony schooled to harness.”

  “Licinius sells the best ones to the officers for their own use, and a few good chariot pairs to the civilians. It does no harm for his stock to win a race or two now and again.”

  “Licinius,” Galt said, and his voice took on an odd, careful note. “I knew a healer of the Eagles once, who had that name.”

  Postumus made an exasperated gesture that sent the blacks leaping wildly in all directions like hares. “Of course you did,” he said, self-consciously getting them under control. “He served at Eburacum with the Ninth Hispana, and so did my father and my stepfather.” He kept his attention on the ponies’ pricked ears ahead of him. “I wondered how long it would take that to come out. Are you sure you want to go on, now?”

  “Are you?” Galt asked.

  Neither spoke, Postumus imagining the slow black dance of carrion birds over Inchtuthil, once Castra Pinnata, something that no doubt Galt had seen in person. He kept the ponies headed away from Dawid’s holding and west along the track that led to the summer pastures. At the foot of the hill, the road was wooded, thick and secret, oak and elm and ash spotted with the fading white flowers of rowan, the ponies’ hoofbeats hushed by last season’s fallen leaves.

  Finally, Galt spoke. “Do you want to know what it was like, for us, afterward?”

  “Yes.”

  Galt braced his back against the gentle motion of the chariot. “The year after the High King died was a bad one. We had beaten the Army of the Eagles, but we had also destroyed and shamed a legion, and that, Rome does not forgive. I forced peace on the tribe, and on the Selgovae, because I saw that while the old emperor of the Eagles had left Britain much to its own devices, and taken its troops to fight in another war somewhere else, the new one who had just been made was sending a new army here to take back what had been lost, and they would take revenge for that dead legion. And so we made peace while we were still strong, for the better terms. But there were still terms—taxes, and young men conscripted for your auxiliaries, and veterans settled on our land—and there were many who felt that their dead had gone for nothing.”

  “And would have thrown more dead after them?” Postumus asked. “For honor’s sake?”

  “It would have been worse if we had fought on, or at least I thought so, but there is no way of proving a thing that has not happened. There were bad crops after that—six in a row—and many of the cattle died, and then there was sickness among us. Mainly the children, which is always heartbreaking, but the queen died also, and we came close to losing the young king. And the priests, who sometimes show more wisdom than others, said that it was the fault of bowing to the Romans, that we had angered the Sun Lord, Lugh Shining Spear, and also the Mother, for leaving the Roman kind alive to trample her land.”

  Postumus was silent. When Boudicca of the Iceni had risen in rebellion eighty years ago, she had laid waste to three cities and a legion—the Ninth. Why did things always come back to the Ninth? That rebellion was put down mercilessly. Gwytha had told him that her own mother had been a small child then, and she remembered buildings in flames and men on horses riding down whoever was in their path. It had marked her, Gwytha said. “It’s why I can’t go back. Not having lived among Romans,” she had said softly.

  “I understand better than you might think,” Postumus said finally. He turned the ponies around, feeling that enough of a strain had been put on Galt’s leg, and the peace of mind of them both, for one day.

  * * *

  Still, after that they rode out often, although Postumus insisted that Galt do his own walking for part of the way each
day, to strengthen his leg.

  “I told you, we are a horse people,” Galt said disgustedly, as they strolled at the ponies’ heads. “No warrior of the Brigantes has ever walked when he could drive or ride.”

  “You should march with a legion someday,” Postumus said. “Twenty miles a day, and a marching camp to build at the end of it. Twenty-four if you’re in a hurry.”

  Galt grimaced. “Thank you, no. I destroy my credit sufficiently just being seen with you.”

  They walked on in companionable silence. Something that Postumus couldn’t put his finger on had happened after that first drive, and now they no longer fenced with each other, as if by laying bare the past they had opened some gate between them as well.

  As his leg strengthened, and the pain in it eased, Galt’s taste for bright finery made a reappearance. The plain tunics and cloak that had served in his convalescence disappeared to be replaced by breeches and shirts in bright colors, intricately patterned, made brighter by a collection of arm rings and cloak pins that would have done credit to a dancing girl. He was still accounted the best, and most dangerous, of the tribe’s warriors and could afford small vanities.

  Bran had left at last to visit other holdings, after a short and furious quarrel with Galt, which Postumus was aware he was not meant to have overheard. It was happenstance—mostly—that he had been standing in the shadow of the pony shed while they quarreled inside.

  “It is beyond foolish to let the Roman run tame among us! I have told Dawid this, but he won’t go against you.” Bran’s voice was biting. “I am not your fosterling anymore. And I tell you to send him away. Now!”

  “You were my fosterling for the love I bore your father,” Galt said quietly. “And as you say, you are no more. I will keep him by me until I am sure I will not lose my leg.”