Traitor

by Geraint Jones

  ‘You must stay with the army, lord,’ he tried.

  ‘I must come to the aid of my allies, Vuk.’

  ‘With respect, lord King,’ I found myself saying, ‘Vuk is right. First and foremost you are king of the Breuci. We don’t know the size of the army attacking the Mazaei. It could even be a trap.’

  ‘We can’t let the Mazaei fall,’ Pinnes said firmly.

  ‘Agreed, lord!’ Ziva shouted, with acid eyes for me.

  I ignored him. ‘And we won’t, lord,’ I promised, ‘but if you die, the rebellion dies with you.’

  That was the truth, and we all knew it. Even Ziva held his serpent’s tongue. For a moment there was silence, and then Pinnes swallowed and nodded. I could see the pain that it caused him. He was no coward, but thankfully, he was no fool either.

  ‘Take all of the cavalry,’ he told us.

  ‘Sir,’ Vuk tried, ‘we must leave some for your protection.’

  ‘Leave me half of the bodyguard, that’s it,’ the king insisted. ‘Take every other horseman, Vuk. Save our allies.’

  Vuk was unhappy to be leaving the king’s force of infantry without cavalry support, but it was clear the king’s mind was set, and time was short.

  ‘Go,’ the king ordered, ‘ride hard.’ He caught my eye. ‘And good luck.’

  Vuk and Ziva began calling orders that echoed along the line, and then we were pulling away from the army, riding, the scout at the head of the column beside us.

  ‘How many?’ Vuk asked him again.

  ‘Hard to tell, sir. They must have got around them in the night. When I left, the Mazaei warriors were forming up to try and keep the Romans from the women and children.’

  ‘The whole tribe is together?’ Ziva asked.

  ‘Yes, sir. That’s why they couldn’t get away. They’re trying to make a stand to protect the women and children.’

  ‘Who leads the Romans?’ I wanted to know, and I saw Ziva sneer.

  ‘Maybe it’s one of your four friends?’

  I ignored him and looked at the scout. He had no answer for me. ‘I don’t know, sir. I didn’t see any legions,’ he added.

  That was some comfort at least. Perhaps this Roman force was made up only of light infantry and cavalry, sent through the mountains to push the tribes onto the waiting blades of Tiberius’s heavy infantry.

  ‘How many cavalry do we have?’ I asked Vuk.

  ‘Four thousand.’

  I looked over my shoulder, and saw the thunder following behind us. The faces of the Pannonian cavalry were grim and set. They were ready for a fight.

  ‘Ready to kill Romans?’ Ziva called to me with pleasure. ‘Or are you still undecided on who you fight for?’

  ‘I fight for the king,’ I told him, and they were true words, and proud.

  Ziva’s face curdled into a smile nonetheless. ‘We shall see.’

  * * *

  We rode hard for an hour. My legs were battered, and Ahren heaved. When the scout told us that we were drawing close, Vuk ordered the column to halt.

  ‘Why are we waiting?’ Ziva snapped.

  ‘I’m not having us ride into battle on blown horses,’ Vuk replied, and Ziva sulked but said nothing. He might consider himself a cut above the other Pannonians, but he feared Vuk, as any sane man would.

  ‘Listen,’ the scout told us.

  Above the breath of horses and men we could hear it, now, the distant drone of battle. It was hidden to us from a nearby rise, but there was no mistaking the overlapping sounds of steel and screams. Occasionally figures appeared and ran down the ridge, fugitives from the fight.

  ‘We should execute them if they’re deserters,’ Ziva said, with a smile for me. ‘Make an example of them.’

  ‘Boil your head,’ I thought I heard Vuk mutter. Then he leaned forwards and patted the neck of his mount – he dared not wait any longer. ‘We move forwards at a walk,’ he shouted. ‘We will form line in that field, then take the rise together. Whatever we find on the other side we kill without mercy!’

  ‘We should form wedges,’ Ziva spoke.

  ‘We should,’ Vuk nodded, ‘but we don’t have time.’ He twisted in the saddle. ‘Forwards!’ he called down the line, and the column of horseflesh and steel began to spill into the field.

  We could see the figures now. The fugitives of battle. Civilians. Some clutched children. Others clutched wounds. I saw a woman stumble onwards, her face slick with blood – part of her scalp was missing.

  I looked at Ziva and saw nothing but predatory excitement on his face. He was drawn to suffering like a moth to light.

  Not Vuk. He was a grim man resigned to battle. Women, children and elderly men streamed by him, their faces painted in gore and horror.

  I felt it then. Recognised it, at least. There was a change in me. A change long coming, and now it broke free.

  This war was no longer about Roman versus rebel, to me, nor about my past. It was about the weak fighting back against the powerful. Prey against predators. It had started with Beatha. She was innocent. How many Beathas were on this field now? How many Mirans? How many Bornas?

  I fought for them.

  Our force peeled out to the flanks and formed hasty battle lines. I looked along our ranks, saw the men and steel, and Cynbel’s words rushed back to me:

  ‘A warrior fights for others, but thinks for himself. He is a teacher, and student. A father, and son. A warrior will kill more willingly, and die more readily than any soldier, but there must be a purpose to that bloodshed, even if it is simply the joy of his calling, and the brotherhood. A soldier is on the battlefield because he is told to be. A warrior is there because there is no place on earth he would rather be.’

  Vuk was looking at me intently. I realised then that I was speaking the words out loud. For a moment I felt embarrassment, but then his look told me to go on.

  And so I spoke.

  ‘There is one final difference,’ Cynbel had told me. ‘A soldier fears death. A warrior fears failure.’ I met Vuk’s hard eyes. ‘We cannot fail here.’

  He gave me his hand. ‘We will not fail.’

  And then we were pressing up the slope, a thick line of man, and beast, and arms. Civilians streamed down before us. At first I saw horror in their eyes, then hope when they heard the shouts of our horsemen.

  ‘We’re with you!’

  ‘You’re safe!’

  ‘Get behind us!’

  Ahead the din of battle was growing. A rolling thunder cut through with the shrieks of the dying. The top of the rise was a few moments ahead of us, and death lay beyond it.

  My hand reached beneath my mail and felt for the golden disc that rested against my heart. My father had courage. He’d risked his lives for others, and I must do the same.

  I should have been scared. Instead a blanket of calm settled over me. I was at peace.

  There was no place on earth I would rather have been.

  I drew my blade, and prepared to leave my life as a warrior.

  Chapter 51

  We crossed the rise as a solid line of spear, and shield, and steed, two thousand riders wide, two deep. Our pennants snapped in the wind, our weapons shone in the sun. How glorious must we have been. How mighty must we have seemed when Vuk raised his blade and roared:

  ‘For the king! For Pannonia!’

  His men threw violent curses to the air – their blood had boiled at the sight of what was ahead of us.

  We were witness to a massacre.

  The Mazaei lines had shattered, and the battlefield had broken down into desperate last stands of soldiers, fleeing civilians, and the screams of the women that now fell into Roman hands. There must have been ten thousand of them on the field at least, light troops and auxiliaries who chased and maimed and killed and plundered.

  ‘They’ve put the whole tribe to the sword…’ I heard Ziva say, and then he stopped his horse.

  ‘Halt!’ he shouted along the line, ‘halt! This battle is already lost! We must return to the ki
ng!’

  He was right, of course, there was no saving these people, and the horsemen of Pannonia saw as much. Cheers died in their throats. A proud advance stuttered and stalled.

  ‘Vuk,’ Ziva called across to him, ‘we must return to the king!’

  But the bodyguard was torn. These were Pannonians. These were allies. These were women, and children, and the elderly, and they were being raped and killed and gutted before our eyes.

  It came for me then – the memory of Beatha. Of finding her throat slit and her thighs bloody – and as the pain of that moment overcame me, I was no longer thinking of sense, and odds. I was thinking of Miran, and Borna. Of how they would look when they were pinned beneath a conquering soldier. Of how they would live as slaves, should they survive long enough to make it to the filthy, miserable pens.

  All hope of sense and reason left me as a familiar feeling returned to my body, and I was reunited with the emotion that had driven me to the legions in the first place:

  Rage.

  Pure. Uncontrollable. Rage.

  The blade shook in my hand. There was nothing else I wanted in that moment – in the world – than to kill.

  ‘For Pannonia!’ I cried. ‘For the king!’

  And then I was kicking Ahren forwards, and charging alone into the enemy host.

  ‘For the king!’ I screamed. ‘For the king!’

  * * *

  There are no words that can truly describe what happened in the moments after I charged Ahren forwards, alone, to bring death to Roman soldiers.

  I did not know that Vuk and others, inspired by the rage that had gripped me, had plunged their own horses down the ridge and surged with shield and spear into the Roman foe. I did not see their blades puncture flesh, their horses trample soldiers. I did not see shield on shield, and sword on sword. I did not see men fall from the saddle. I did not see the legs cut from horses, and men tear at each other’s eyeballs when all blades were lost.

  I was in my own fight, my own war. As I rode into the massacre of a tribe I was overwhelmed by the sights. It was a riot of noise, of misery, and conquest. I did not register the face of the first man that I killed. I simply swung my blade at the flesh beneath a helmet, and felt it wrench the soldier’s skull from his shoulders as the power of Ahren carried us forwards.

  I had taken the life of a Roman soldier.

  His was not the last. They were everywhere, auxiliaries who had pledged their service to an emperor far away, and for that I killed them. They could not match my ferocity. They could not match my skill. I cut and thrust as though I were Mars himself, a god of war, and I saw terror in their faces as they fell back before me.

  When they dropped from wounds, I had no mercy. When they begged for it, I gave them steel instead. Their blood sprayed my face and I tasted it in my mouth. Felt it in my eyes.

  I was unstoppable.

  And then Ahren was down. Kicking, braying, his legs wild. There was a spear in his chest. My friend was dying.

  A wild eye burned into me. He had been loyal. He had been brave. He was a comrade. Like so many others, he deserved better.

  I ended his suffering. I did what I had to do. What I hoped someone would do for me. It tore a piece of my heart out nonetheless.

  There was no hope for my enemy now.

  How long I killed and maimed I do not know. My muscles burned with fatigue, but my need to kill burned brighter still. The killer in me had come unchained. Now unleashed, there was no tying myself back to reason. No pulling myself to sanity.

  If they had come at me all together I would have died on that battlefield, but the auxiliary soldiers had believed the battle won. They’d expected rape and plunder, not warriors and a fight, and so they fell back before me in ones and twos. They fell back before us all. It was only in that space that Vuk could yell at me. The bodyguard held back out of reach of my sword – he knew that I had the battle madness.

  ‘Corvus!’ he called to me from his horse, ‘Corvus, come! Get on! We have to leave! They’re rallying! Come!’

  I looked across the battlefield – our moment of surprise had been lost. Roman cavalry were forming into wedges.

  Where were our own?

  ‘Ziva and his men have left!’ Vuk was shouting. ‘My own are dead! Corvus, we have to leave! Get on! Get on now!’

  I would not. Instead I picked up a spear, and prepared to meet the charge.

  I felt a hand grip me by the shoulder. Vuk had risked himself to come closer. I looked up into his face.

  ‘Will you make me die with you, you selfish bastard?’ His hooded eyes were dark and angry. ‘Will you leave the king? Will you leave your friends?’

  I faltered, and looked again to the cavalry that thundered towards us.

  ‘Now or never, Corvus! Now or never!’

  The horsemen trampled dead and dying as they lowered spears and raised shields. They were a wall. A wave.

  They were unstoppable death.

  I made my decision.

  Chapter 52

  Our lives were spared at the expense of others’.

  I sat behind Vuk on his horse, and we were surely doomed to fall to the spears of chasing cavalry, but as we crossed the ridge the Roman soldiers saw the easier targets of survivors fleeing on foot, and turned their attention to them – they could expect two warriors to fight to the death, but a captured woman or child they could rape and sell as slaves.

  We abandoned them to that fate.

  I was numb as we rode away from the battlefield. Horsemen begin to appear in ones and twos – others who survived the fight. They called to each other, giving prayer for being reunited with friends, and giving cries for those that were lost. All told we were less than two hundred.

  ‘How many men did Ziva ride away with?’ I croaked through parched lips.

  ‘Two thousand,’ Vuk replied with iron in his voice.

  We had lost over a thousand.

  I wanted to weep for them. I wanted to cry for the women, and the children, and the fighting men of the Mazaei, but I had nothing. A tribe had been annihilated, and I had nothing.

  We rode on in silence. The survivors of the charge were bloodied, and resigned. It was late in the day when we found the column of Pinnes, and the Breuci. The sun was setting when we reined in before the king. We would break his heart beneath a pink sky.

  Ziva and his men were nowhere to be seen. We’d brought the first word of what had happened. The king looked to Vuk, his stalwart. ‘The Mazaei?’ he asked, but he already knew.

  ‘Put to the sword, sir. They were killing them all, man, woman and child.’

  Pinnes exhaled. In this moment he saw the fate of all tribes who held out against the force of empire. There was to be no mercy. No settlement. To fight was to die.

  There was a falter in his voice as the king called forward a herald.

  ‘Deliver a message to the Roman commander,’ he ordered in words of ash. ‘Tell him that I am ready to surrender.’

  Chapter 53

  The war was over. The king was to surrender his army. There would be no shelter for Corvus the Traitor.

  ‘You need to go, Corvus.’ Pinnes said no more than that. Behind his eyes, the king’s world was falling apart.

  It was over.

  I was still seated behind Vuk on his horse. He turned his head to me.

  ‘I’ll take you.’

  ‘I can’t leave,’ I said. ‘There are people here I need to see.’

  ‘There’s no time,’ Vuk shook his head. ‘Their cavalry was on our arse. They could be here any moment.’

  I knew that he was right, and yet…

  ‘We’ll wait in the forests until the surrender is done, Corvus. Your friends will still be here. The war’s over.’

  Something in his tone suggested otherwise. I understood, then. Vuk wanted to leave with me so that he was not part of the surrender. He planned to fight on.

  I looked to Pinnes and saw him struggle to keep his shoulders up and back straight. The weig
ht of defeat was crushing him. He was looking at the faces of the men he was about to surrender to an emperor. The landscape he was about to seed to Rome.

  The king’s heart was broken.

  ‘Pinnes…’ I said to Vuk, but he was already walking his horse clear.

  ‘You can’t serve the king if you’re dead.’

  And then we were riding from the army, riding for a forest.

  Behind us, the rebellion died in silence.

  * * *

  It was three days before the surrender.

  In that time I took refuge with Vuk on a wooded mountainside. We foraged for food, and drank from streams. We were hungry, sullen and silent.

  We were defeated.

  Then, one brilliant morning, we saw movement in the camp below. Lots of it. From our position in the trees, I watched with Vuk as King Pinnes drew his army up on the banks of the shining river Bathinus.

  ‘Are they to fight?’ I asked almost hopefully.

  Vuk shook his head, and said nothing. For days we had watched from our vantage as messengers went to and fro between the forces, but there had been no sight of the Roman army.

  ‘They are waiting for Tiberius,’ Vuk guessed, and I saw no fault in his thought. No doubt riders had been dispatched to the Sava Valley to bring the man who would one day be emperor. The glory of this victory was his.

  The Pannonian army stood in silent ranks across the meadows. The sun was high and bright and the river waters shimmered. I felt helpless. I felt horrid. I was not fearful for myself, but my heart was breaking for the valorous king, and the pain that he must be suffering. Pinnes and so many had given so much, and where had it led them? What was it all for?

  Vuk saw my despair. ‘It’s not over.’

  ‘He’s surrendering.’

  ‘You and I are not. So long as someone is fighting, there is a rebellion,’ Vuk insisted. ‘Corvus. Look at me. Do you hear me?’

  ‘I hear you.’

  And what other choice was there? My only chance to buy Roman grace was to deliver the king’s head to Rome, and I could no more hurt him than I could Cynbel, Thumper, Miran or Borna.