The last twenty feet seemed to take an age. Aches were now a stark pain in his arms and legs, every movement an effort. Bran smiled at him, the indulgent smile reserved for infants or the elderly and infirm doing the simplest thing. Ferox struggled on. The whole right leg of his trousers had split and hung open, his skin grazed and cut by sharp edges.
Bran moved, climbing the last couple of feet and peering over the lip. Then he scampered up and over and was lost from view. Ferox followed, muttering curses under his breath, blaming Trajan, Crispinus, damned women, and all the gods and goddesses for bringing him here. The stern silence of the Silures no longer mattered so much to him compared to venting his rage and frustration. He climbed on, the top seeming no closer, and suddenly the boy appeared, staring down and smiling.
At last Ferox scrambled over the edge. He was breathing like a hound after a long chase, and moving like an old man. Bran was crouched behind a wattle fence that crossed the grass in front of them. Beyond was the building, long and broad, but a lot lower than he had expected. There was no sound apart from the angry gulls, the wash of the sea and his own panting. He pushed up on all fours and crawled over to some boulders, where he sat, resting his back. The boy was puzzled and came over.
‘Shall I tie the rope?’ he whispered. There were some low rocks, but none were big enough to hold the weight. ‘You will have to move.’ Ferox realised that the only place was where he was resting. He smiled and forced himself up. Once he was standing it was easier. He drew his sword and went over to the fence. Peering over the top, he saw a patch of cultivated ground around the house and a couple of pigs rooting around for food. There was no door in the building on this side, and no sign of anyone, but the house blocked his view. He moved along to the end and could see more buildings dotted around the slopes below, and he ducked because a couple of women came out of one. They did not seem to have noticed him.
While the others started to climb he rested. Brigita was first, then the boy with the thin moustache, and next the brown-haired woman. With the aid of the rope, none of them seemed to have picked up as many cuts and scars on the way as the Roman.
The others frowned when they heard the shouting getting louder, but Ferox knew the barritus. ‘They are just starting,’ he whispered, but it was frustrating because from up here they could not see what was going on. At least it should keep the defenders busy, but as the rest of them came up the cliff the noise grew indistinct and certainly drew no closer. Between them they brought a helmet, cuirass and shield, which the mother had provided for him. It was a scale shirt, clumsy and a little tight, but better than nothing. The helmet was an iron legionary one, with studs on the cheek pieces, a deep and broad neck guard, and embossed shapes meant to look like eyebrows in front. He tied it in place, wishing he had the woolly hat as padding. The shield was small and square, and had a black eagle painted on it.
When it came, the scream blotted out all other noise and seemed to go on forever. One of the lads looked back and went pale. Ferox peeked over the fence, saw no one, and then ran to the edge.
‘It was a bird,’ Brigita said. ‘It flew straight into his face and he slipped.’ The twisted shape of one of the young warriors lay on the little beach.
Ferox was tempted to go on and let the rest catch up, but with so few of them it was foolish to split up for no reason. Still, it would do no harm to look in the house. He whispered to Brigita and the lad with the moustache to follow and then pulled himself over the fence. One of the pigs squealed because he landed beside it. He went to the back wall of the building and waited for the others. He guessed that the entrance would face south, and they came around the corner and saw it ahead of them. Ferox gestured at the youth to go to the other side. Looking downhill, he could not see much apart from other buildings and thatched roofs, and the top of a tower. Pirates were on the top, and he saw one throwing something down. The wind had veered, blowing from behind them, and it was hard to hear anything. Then trumpets blared and he heard a great shout. The Romans must have resumed their assault.
He hefted his shield and walked towards the entrance. At least it was not a roundhouse, where he would have to duck to get through the low door, and his reason told him that no one should be waiting to kill him as he burst in. He still wondered, and took a deep breath before he kicked the door hard and it flew back. There was firelight in the house, which was like a long hall with a fire in the middle. He ran in, the air thick with the smell of damp rushes and wood smoke. A girl of no more than ten stared at him wide-eyed. An old woman, her long, thin hair white under the layers of dirt, turned around.
‘Who are you?’ Ferox was wearing the black cloak and trousers taken from dead pirates, and he guessed the woman assumed he was one of the band. ‘Come closer where I can see you.’
Brigita came into the hall and no one would mistake her for one of Harii. The little girl gasped and ran to cling to the older woman. A male voice shouted out in anger, and Ferox knew it at once and felt his rage coming back. He went to one of the bowers fenced off from the main hall, and as he reached it the drapes were wrenched aside. Genialis appeared, his young face more than usually cruel in its anger.
‘You!’ he said in surprise as much as horror.
Ferox punched Genialis with the boss of his shield, sending him back, and then punched him again to knock him down. A woman screamed, then another, and Ferox saw that there were two naked girls in the little room. One had a black eye and both scrambled away and crouched by the wall, whimpering. Genialis was on the floor, bare apart from a blanket half-draped around him, and trying to wriggle away. Ferox jabbed with his sword, stopping the point inches from his face. The youth froze.
‘I’d be doing your father a favour if I killed you,’ Ferox said.
‘Cniva is my father.’
‘Then I won’t do him a favour.’ Ferox pulled his sword away, and stamped hard on the youth’s leg. Genialis screamed, so he kicked him in the crotch. ‘Quiet,’ he yelled. The lad sobbed, but said nothing.
There was no one else in the house. They found rope and tied the boy up, and Ferox set the warrior with the moustache to watch their prisoners. ‘If he speaks or moves, just kill him,’ he said, and repeated it in Latin to make sure that Genialis understood. Brigita whispered something to the young warrior that made him grin.
‘He will do it,’ she said.
‘Good.’
There was a yelp and Ferox saw that the old woman had kicked Genialis as he sat with his back to the wall. She kicked him again and spat in his face. Then she went in to the naked girls and spoke softly to them. It was clear that these people had no love for Cniva’s son, and he wondered if they were captives kept as slaves.
‘We will leave one of the younger lads here as well,’ Ferox decided. That left him with half a dozen boys, the three warrior women, Brigita and Bran, although he would try to keep the boy away from the fighting if he could. ‘Will your mother stay with them?’
‘She goes where she wishes,’ the queen replied, and it was clear that she wished to stay with the main group.
Ferox had them go through the stacks of firewood and find a few branches to make into torches. By the time they began to walk downhill towards the rest of the houses, a swirling wind whipped at the flames. He could hear shouting and horns blowing. There was no sign of anyone abroad in the settlement, so they walked towards the houses. Ferox led, with Brigita beside him. The others came as a single rank after them, with the mother and Bran at the rear. A tethered goat bleated at them from outside the nearest building.
The nearest building was a smaller version of the main hall, and again lacked any windows. Half a dozen more houses clustered behind it, narrow and muddy alleys threading their way through the jumble of buildings and fenced gardens. Ferox led them into the nearest. There was still no sign of anyone, giving the place an eerie, abandoned air. A woman appeared in a doorway, and she had the same dull and fearful gaze of the ones in the house with Genialis. He nodded amicably to her
and she vanished.
They turned sharply, following the path around the next thatched house, this one built from timber framing, with big patches of the whitewashed mud daub missing. The place reminded Ferox of villages he had seen on the Rhine and Danube, and he had never discerned much sense of order in those either.
A woman almost bumped into them, going the other way, so that she dropped the bundle of firewood she was carrying. She was young, little more than a girl, and had the slim face and limbs of a Hibernian.
‘I’m sorry, lord,’ she gasped, flinching back from the expected blow. Then she saw Brigita, and the red-headed warrior woman and her mouth opened. She ran, leaving the wood where it lay. The redhead raised a javelin, but Ferox beat it down.
‘No. We’ll do more good if we make Cniva nervous. She’ll tell of enemies within their walls, and he will not know how many. Come on.’ He led them back the way they had come and they took another of the narrow paths, running between two houses whose eaves almost touched. It led them to another barn-like building next to an open space and beyond that another cluster of houses. Ferox could see the top of the gate-tower behind them, so they must be getting close.
Three men appeared at the far side of the narrow clearing. One’s bare head hung low, and the others had their arms around his shoulders to help him along. All three were clad in the black and drab colours of the pirates, with the wounded man in scale armour and the others wearing mail and bronze helmets of the simple patterns often issued to auxiliaries.
Ferox ran at them, shield up and sword raised. A javelin thrummed in the air beside him. As the men looked up the missile struck one of the carriers in the chest. The man gasped, pulling free, and the wounded man slumped down. The third reached for his sword, but Ferox was on him before he was ready. The pirate crouched away, tipping his head so that he could not see his attacker. The centurion slashed, avoiding the top of the helmet and cutting into the pirate’s neck above his mail cuirass. Blood sprayed as he wrenched the gladius back up, but the man was already falling and there was no need for a second blow. Brigita drove her javelin into the eye of the injured man and had to put a foot on his chest to yank it free. The redhead was kneeling beside the one she had hit with her throw, dragging his helmet off. Her sword was on the ground beside her.
‘No time for that now!’ Ferox said, guessing that she wanted his head. With an expression of mild disappointment, the young woman picked up her sword and sliced through the man’s throat.
A shout came from behind, and they turned to see that two pirates had opened the big door of the barn. The young warriors swarmed around them, jabbing and cutting with more frenzy than skill. They went inside, leaping over the dying pirates, and there were more screams.
‘Keep an eye open,’ Ferox told Brigita, pointing at the mouth of the alley from which the three men had come. By the time he reached the barn the warriors had finished. There must have been a dozen injured Harii and Usipi on the straw of the barn with a man and some women tending to them. The last of the men died as he came into the building. A lad with the face of Eros was still twisting his spearhead in the pirate’s belly. Poets often spoke of the beauty and innocence of youth, but rarely rejoiced in the viciousness that lived in many. Still, that was something for Ovidius to debate when it was all over, and none of these men deserved mercy.
Another of the lads dropped his shield and javelins and grabbed a girl, who looked barely a year or so older. With a quick motion, he ripped the top of her dress down. She did not scream and that was odd, and no doubt told a story of the lives these slaves had with their masters.
Ferox ran over and smacked the boy on the side of the head, using a fist still clutching his sword. He must have hit harder than intended, for the boy fell. One of the others laughed, and the lad glared up at him, looking more than ever like a child. A voice cut over the laughter. The mother said just one word, and it gave the youth a harder blow than Ferox’s punch. He stood, picked up his weapons, and then, oddest of all, he gave a little bow to the girl and scampered off with the others. The mother was already outside. Brigita and the redhead came back to join them as five pirates appeared, led by an older man with a long, brown beard that spilled out of the cheek pieces of his helmet and fell almost to his waist.
‘Form with me.’ Ferox pushed himself through the rest and stood, shield braced. Brigita and the redhead came up on his left and the other two women on his right. A glance to see they were there showed him the bare breasts of the one with brown hair, and it added to the unreal quality of this day. The boys split and joined them on either side. ‘Come on!’ he shouted, and charged. Javelins were thrown, and one of the pirates reeled, spitted through the thigh, while another had two missiles strike his shield and burst through the board. Ferox was screaming in anger and the others joined in, a strangely high-pitched battle cry. He headed for the bearded man.
The enemy stood their ground, and most of the chargers stopped, apart from one boy who flung himself bodily at the pirate on the far left of the line, sending them both sprawling. The black-clad man next to him reversed his spear and rammed it down, pinning the boy to the ground. A moment later one of the other lads stabbed under the pirate’s guard, striking the fringe of his long cuirass. The armour held, but the blow was hard and forced the man back.
Ferox’s shield banged hard against his opponent’s. The bearded man had his sword at eye level, elbow bent and waiting for the chance to jab. Ferox had taken the same guard, and they eyed each other warily, feinting without committing to a blow. The pirates were outnumbered from the start, and scattered so that sometimes two came against one. The redhead almost managed to slip her spear past a man’s shield, and when he moved to block it, Brigita thrust her sword into his belly. Rings snapped as the point struck, but they took enough force from the blow to stop it being fatal. The man grunted with pain and slashed at the queen, and then the redhead’s broad spear point took him in the leg and he sank down. Brigita cut again, the sword making a dull clang and leaving a dent where it struck the helmet. The other woman drove her spear through the pirate’s boot and foot, and when he shrieked in agony his head went back and the queen stabbed him through the throat.
The bearded leader realised that his men were losing, so attacked, jabbing at Ferox’s eyes. He swayed out of the way, jerking his shield up so that the rim struck the man’s arm. His own jab was stopped, the point catching on the edge of the helmet’s cheek piece, but the two blows unbalanced the man. Ferox followed up, using the round wooden pommel of his gladius to beat the pirate in the face. He felt teeth and bone snapping, struck again and the man sank to his knees. Ferox kicked him over and a moment later one of the boys appeared and hacked again and again at the pirate’s bloodied head. The blows struck the bronze helmet, which must have been a good one because after three or four the blade of the boy’s sword had bent out of shape. The pirate moaned, and Ferox killed him with a stab to the throat. Blood spurted higher than he expected, most of it spraying over the boy, who was laughing hysterically.
All of the pirates were dead. The fair-haired woman had a small cut above one eye, and one of the boys a longer graze along his right arm, but no one was badly hurt and only the one boy had died. The mother remained behind, watching, and if he had had more time Ferox might have resented her scrutiny. She was the only one still carrying a torch, and he guessed that the lads had dropped the others in their excitement. Bran stood beside her like a faithful hound.
‘See if you can set fire to the big barn,’ he told them, ‘and then wait for me behind it.’
Ferox walked over to the alleyway. It ran straight, one of the few paths in this stronghold that did, and he could see the back of the rampart and part of the gate. Pirates still held them, but he could see that they were fighting hard, and as he watched one was flung back off the wall. There were shouts and the odd blast of a trumpet, but the whistles were silent now.
Ferox went to the far end. Most of the black-clad warriors were on th
e wall, in the tower or behind the gate. Those on the wall clustered around a few spots and he guessed that this was where the Romans were attacking. He saw men and women working at fires to heat a couple of cauldrons, and that meant boiling water or oil was being prepared. No one liked to face that, and he wondered whether he should lead his little band to stop it being used. About thirty men sat or crouched on the grass nearby led by a man on horseback and even if they managed to get to the cauldrons and tip it away he doubted that any of them would survive. Instead he would act on the plan that had been forming in his mind since they had captured Genialis.
The centurion strode out into the open.
‘Cniva!’ he bellowed at the horsemen waiting with the warriors. ‘Cniva!’ They were no more than fifty paces away, the small rider’s face clear. ‘I have your son, Cniva! Come and get him or I will put him to the knife. You hear me, Cniva!’
The leader of the Harii gaped at him. Ferox expected rage and even a lone charge, but he could not catch the words as the pirate chief shouted something to his men. The men sprang to their feet, began to move and only then did the horseman come for him.
Ferox ran.
XXVIII
THE TESTUDO LED the second attack and did it slowly. Five abreast and ten deep the legionaries went through the cleared entrance in the first rampart and then turned right, heading for the main gate. A spear came down and stuck into one the shields, standing up straight and wobbling slightly each time the soldiers took a pace forward. The next javelin struck the dome-like boss of another shield and bounced back.
‘Keep in step, boys,’ Tertullianus called out. He was in the third rank, his own curved rectangular scutum held up over his head and interlocked with those of his men. ‘Steady now.’
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