‘Or just another body to make a meal for the crows and the foxes,’ Olwyn whispered.
‘No,’ Gwlym cried. ‘Don’t you understand? That is what must not happen. Alive or dead, the great King Cathal, the mighty hammer of Rome, must vanish in the mountain mists. As a man, however great your prowess, your story ends with your death. As a ghost your name will live for ever.’ Still, he sensed doubt. ‘Would Boudicca’s name still be revered if her corpse had been found among the countless dead of her last battle? No, she would just be another commander who underestimated the Romans and led her army to the slaughter. But she was not found. Twenty years later Catuvellauni men still huddle around campfires and whisper that she is alive. In Iceni country women swear they have seen the queen, and her daughters Banna and Rosmerta, walking among the trees or by the river. Her fame will be eternal.’
Cathal felt his wife’s hand settle on his, the slim fingers light as a butterfly’s wings. He turned to look into Olwyn’s eyes and saw tears there, but also a fierce, almost hawkish pride. A message passed between them and Cathal nodded.
‘We will fight.’
But where?
He cast his mind to his surroundings. They could take up position on the high ground beyond the river and draw the Romans on to them. His Selgovae would hold the centre, of course, with Rurid and the Caledonians in the place of honour on his right, and Donacha’s Venicones defending the much more important left with their flank covered by the coastal marshes. The only drawback was that the river here was relatively narrow. After witnessing the ingenuity of the Romans at Brynmochdar and watching them build their defensive camps, he had little doubt that they would swiftly find a way to cross. Cathal had a momentary vision of a Roman legion falling on his flank like wolves. No, it would not do. It was not sufficient just to fight the Romans; enough of his army must survive to spread Gwlym’s myth. Wherever he fought, the ability to conduct a fighting withdrawal was as important as his dispositions for battle. He had the image in his head. All he had to do was find it.
‘We cannot go north …’
‘Then go west,’ Gwlym said. ‘Follow the river and the gods will give you what you seek.’
‘I no longer trust in the gods.’
‘You have a better plan?’
Roman patrols had already been seen south of the river by the time they were ready, but the enemy cavalry were happy to watch the straggling column rather than harass it. For the first three days the going was easy on the flat riverside plain, but on the fourth the country became more hilly and Cathal’s army of ragged skeletons struggled to keep pace with their horseborne chieftains. It was on the morning of the fourth day that he saw the mountain in the distance, like a standing stone silhouetted against the western horizon. It drew him like a honey bee to a flower, and he ordered a change of direction. As the sun rose to its height, he saw it more clearly: a conical hilltop set upon a great raised plateau.
‘I must know the name of that mountain,’ he called to Colm.
The farms they passed had all been abandoned at the first sighting of the column of ragged warriors, but Colm found an ancient abandoned by his family.
‘It is called Bein a Ciche, the Hill of the Beast. A great monster once lived there, but it was slain and the Old People built their stone walls on its height and ruled all they surveyed.’
Colm laughed. ‘They must be old if they are older than you.’
‘Their bones were dust before I was weaned.’ The old man frowned. ‘But their mark is all around you, in the stones, and the earthen mounds where they lay with their treasure.’
‘Enough,’ Cathal said. ‘Take him back to where you found him and give him some bread and cheese.’
It was another hour before he saw it. The head of the column had reached a long, shallow slope that reached out towards the foothills of the mountain. It was perfect.
‘Here,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘Here is where we will fight.’
LX
‘Another one?’
‘He was hiding among the bushes on the far side of the river,’ Gaius Rufus confirmed.
Valerius studied the shaking, emaciated figure held upright by two auxiliaries. His thick beard and dark, straggling hair were matted and dust-caked, and the Roman could see the bones of his ribs through the rents in his ragged plaid tunic. Yet the hooded, glittering eyes held no hint of defeat and Valerius sensed the claw-like fingers itching for a knife to plunge into his throat.
‘A scout?’
Rufus shook his head. ‘He can hardly stand. A straggler or a deserter.’
‘Ask him how far ahead Calgacus’s army is.’
The little scout spat out a burst of Celtic and the prisoner’s lips twitched into a sneer before he replied.
Rufus grinned. ‘He says he knows of no Calgacus, but you will find the army of King Cathal when he wants you to find them. They will fall on you like wolves and like wolves they will tear your flesh and send your army running like sheep over the precipice.’
‘We have captured a poet.’
‘He says Cathal will take your golden breastplate as a trophy to hang in his house for others to admire. Your fine helmet will be a pot for his children to piss in and your wooden hand will be cast into a river so your soul will wander helpless for all eternity.’
‘Cut his throat for his insolence.’ Metilius Aprilis studied the prisoner with cold-eyed contempt.
‘No, put him with the rest,’ Valerius ordered. ‘And make sure he’s fed.’
‘With respect, you’re too soft with the prisoners, legate.’ Aprilis’s tone held anything but respect. ‘We should make an example of them to deter the others and save ourselves the trouble of keeping them.’
Valerius met his new camp prefect’s stare. He didn’t like or trust Aprilis, but Agricola’s former aide had proved a competent administrator and a strict disciplinarian, the ideal combination for the position he held. He knew Aprilis would be reporting his every word and deed back to his master, but he suspected that had been happening anyway. So what was the true purpose of the appointment? It was a question he couldn’t yet answer, but he could feel an ominous twitching in the centre of his back that hinted no good would come of it.
‘Once he’s fed properly he’ll fetch a decent price as a slave. When this is over he might even be persuaded to enlist in the native auxiliary cohorts. The Brigantes are shaping up well.’
‘But how will they react when they discover Calgacus has his own contingent of Brigantes? When they face their tribesfolk on the battlefield will they run off to join them or will they fight?’
‘We’ll just have to make sure they don’t face them,’ Valerius said wryly, but the truth was he’d been asking himself the same question. If it came to a battle, how would their newly trained British auxiliaries react to facing their own countrymen? As he’d warned Agricola, the Batavian rebellion set a terrible precedent for disaster. If a cohort of auxiliaries changed sides at the crucial point of a battle it could end in slaughter.
Once they’d crossed the river, Agricola had altered his dispositions to place the Ninth in the van of the endless column of legionaries and auxiliaries. It had been a surprise to discover that the signs showed Calgacus didn’t continue north, but instead had followed the river west. They’d marched in his wake over the wide swathe of trampled grass and bushes, avoiding the surprisingly numerous black splatters of involuntarily ejected ordure that gave some suggestion of the poor health of the enemy, picking up sickly prisoners along the way. Cavalry rode ahead and on the flanks, and beyond them roved Rufus and his scouts, returning with the news that they were drawing ever closer to their enemy.
Was there a change in Calgacus’s behaviour? As they closed, Valerius would have expected to discover a new sense of urgency in his opponent, but Rufus detected none. They discussed the possibility of ambush, despite the open country to their front and flanks. Their path carried them through empty fields where the legionary caligae crushed whatever spring
plants the Celts had left whole, pasture bare of cattle, sheep or goats, and abandoned houses. Standing stones, man-made mounds and stone circles flanked their route, but Valerius knew they were the creations of men long dead and meant little to the people who worked the fields, apart from fear of the spirits that might lurk there. The marching legionaries sweated in the afternoon heat, but they were in good spirits. It was as if every man had a sense of inevitability. As if, at last, the long campaign was coming to a close.
On the afternoon of the third day they breasted a rise and Valerius had his first view of a mountain that dominated the western horizon. For some reason the sight made him feel very close to the enormous warrior he’d fought on the ice all those years earlier. He looked at the terrain around him. There was a broad platform of high ground on the far side of the river.
‘No point in advancing any further today,’ he told Aprilis. ‘Have the engineers find a place to cross and we’ll start building the camp on that ridge. Send messages to Ursus and Polio to let them know, and,’ he preempted the camp prefect’s protest, ‘of course, the governor.’
He called forward Rufus, who had just returned from one of his forays.
‘I want to know what they call that mountain,’ he told the little man. ‘See if you can find out.’
They were interrupted by a trumpet blast as the signaller relayed the order for the day’s halt.
Rufus laughed. ‘I do not have to. The local people say it is the beginning of the Graupius mountains, the great wilderness that spreads from here to the western sea. It is sacred to them. There is a fort there, but it is long abandoned, and in any case, Calgacus is too wily to cage himself in a fort.’
‘So Mons Graupius?’ Valerius suggested.
‘If you like,’ Rufus agreed.
‘The governor likes to know these things for his map.’
Rufus gave him a knowing look. ‘But …?’
‘I’m curious to get a closer view.’ Valerius removed his helmet and wiped sweat slick hair from his brow. ‘How far ahead is Calgacus’s rearguard?’
‘Less than an hour’s ride. A few outriders to cover their back. They were just short of the mountain when I turned back.’
‘Then we can be there and back before dark. Cornelius?’ he called to his escort commander. ‘Bring the lads up. We have more work to do before they can pitch their tents.’
Rufus led them across the river at a shallows on one of the winding bends and they rode up the far bank. Ahead of them lay a rolling fertile landscape crossed by tracks and chequered with fields and pasture. Rufus avoided the paths and kept to the higher ground.
‘Safer this way,’ he said. ‘The river sweeps in a great half circle to the north. By riding directly west we cut off the base and save time and the horses’ strength.’
‘This is good land.’ Shabolz ventured a rare opinion. ‘I wonder where all the farmers and their families have gone? They must be terrified of us.’
Rufus bit off the words Maybe with good reason. He’d seen the way some of the Ala Petriana acted with the women they found. He shrugged. ‘The tracks say west, but they’re staying away from Calgacus as well, for the moment. Into the hills. Maybe the old fort is an ancient sanctuary, like the one at Trimontium.’
‘For the moment?’ Valerius had caught the emphasis on the phrase.
‘If they think he can beat us you won’t be able to move for sickles and skinning knives trying to cut your balls off. It’s always been the way.’
Every time Valerius raised his head the mountain was closer. They were through the hills now and approaching the river again. Beyond it the country appeared uniformly flat with the mountain on the far horizon. There were other summits to the north and south, but he only had eyes for the conical peak to his front. They recrossed at a ford and Valerius noticed that Rufus slowed the pace. He asked why.
‘This is as far as I’ve come in the past. I have no idea what’s in the woods or in the dead ground. So we go a bit more carefully and we keep our eyes open.’ He looked up at the position of the sun. ‘Maybe we should turn back soon? One mountain’s not much different from another.’
‘But why has Calgacus chosen to come to the mountains at all?’ Valerius said, thoughtfully. ‘We know he needs supplies, but all the corn and fodder available to him is in the untouched lands to the north or our own granaries. Those mountains can’t sustain an army. Unless he wants to lose it, he must turn north or south, yet he does neither. All he has accomplished is allow us to force him closer to the mountains where he has no room for manoeuvre. Something isn’t right.’ He could feel the escort’s doubt and their nervousness at being so close to an overwhelming enemy in such small numbers. ‘One more rise,’ he conceded. ‘We will see what is over that ridge and then go back.’
Their horses plodded doggedly up the slope, with Rufus in the lead, but it was Hilario, twice his height, who reacted first, hauling at the midget’s bridle. ‘By all the gods, stay off the skyline.’ He looked frantically back to Valerius. ‘Stay where you are, lord, if you value your life.’
‘What is it?’ Valerius demanded.
‘Calgacus,’ the big man replied. ‘And he’s got his whole army with him.’
‘Cornelius, you and Shabolz with me.’ He dropped from the saddle and ran up the bank. ‘Tell the others to be ready to move at my order.’
‘Well, Agricola wanted a fight.’ Rufus led his own and Hilario’s horse past Valerius. ‘It looks as though he’s got one.’
Valerius reached the top of the rise and squirmed forward to a clump of bushes where Hilario lay prone. Shabolz and Felix moved in beside them. ‘There, lord.’ The big cavalryman parted a pair of branches.
Valerius had seen barbarian hordes before, and more numerous ones – Boudicca’s rebels and the army of the Parthian King of Kings dwarfed these numbers – but what he saw still took his breath away. The mountain peak that had drawn him here was off to his right. Calgacus had formed up his army on a hill to his immediate front. Perhaps a thousand paces away, across a shallow dip, what seemed like every Celtic warrior in the north was arrayed in ranks across the horseshoe of the lower slopes. Thousands upon thousands of them in three distinct divisions, their banners waving in the breeze and their spear points glittering in the sunlight. Calgacus’s horse, including the remaining cavalry animals he’d stolen from Valerius, grazed on the tender shoots of the plain or drank from a small stream in the bottom of the dip, their riders at their sides. ‘What’s that?’ he asked Shabolz, who had the best eyes of any of them.
The Pannonian squinted into the sun. ‘I think they must be chariots, lord, maybe ten of them gathered in a bunch on the right flank. Have you ever fought chariots, lord?’
‘No,’ Valerius admitted. ‘But I’ve seen them from a distance.’ He remembered the little two-wheeled carts darting about the slope opposite Colonia carrying Boudicca’s war chiefs. But this was different. ‘I don’t think we need to be frightened of them on this ground. That looks like marsh at the bottom of the dip. Too many obstacles to allow them to manoeuvre properly. In any case, there aren’t enough of them to make a difference.’
‘Looks like plenty to me,’ Hilario growled, making the others laugh.
‘Plenty for all,’ Valerius agreed. He wriggled backwards and the others followed. When they were out of sight of the hill he stood and tried to gather his thoughts as his men waited patiently. ‘Cornelius,’ he called to the escort commander. ‘You’ll go back with five men and tell the governor what you’ve seen. We have Calgacus at bay. Tell him to make his best speed with the legions.’
‘And you, lord?’ the decurion said with a frown.
Valerius exchanged a glance with Shabolz and Rufus. ‘We’ll be staying here.’
LXI
Cathal and Olwyn watched hand in hand from the top of the hill as dusk fell, the sky gradually softening into astonishing bands of colour: crimson, gold, silver and turquoise, the deeper blue of a winter sea, and finally the black of night
. He felt her shiver and he knew she too was wondering if this was the last time they would look upon this marvel of the gods together. He wanted to pick her up, feel the lightness of that slim girlish form in his arms, and the firmness of her against his body, but he understood it could not be. Hard enough for her to face what was to come without prolonging or intensifying the pain.
‘It is time,’ he said.
‘You know I would rather stay and share your fate, whatever it is?’
‘I know,’ Cathal assured her. ‘But it cannot be. You must go, for the sake of Berta and Dugald, and all the others who will not leave without your example. Rurid’s guides will lead you back to King Crinan. He has agreed to take you in and treat you with honour and respect. I will join you if I can.’
She turned to him and pressed against him, her head barely reaching his chest. Her body heaved with emotion and he knew she was trying not to weep. He stroked her hair, marvelling, as ever, that his massive hands forged by sword and axe and hammer could be so gentle. It had always been that way with them. Cathal so huge and so strong, treating her like a precious jewel, until Olwyn’s inner fire lit their mutual passion.
‘Forgive me. My pride brought us here.’ The catch in her voice almost choked off the words at their source. ‘I encouraged you to leave Mairos and take your warriors to the hills. When the Argento Rìgh refused to aid you, it was I who urged you not to turn back. When you faltered, who else but Olwyn could put the fire back in your belly and the sword in your hand? And all for what? Gwlym …’
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