by Jim Eldridge
With that Pentheus left us and ran to his tent. He reappeared a moment later armed with a short sword.
Talos didn’t seem at all frightened. It struck me that if he’d been travelling with Pentheus and the Roman army, he must have seen plenty of battles in his life. From our position beneath the cart we couldn’t see much. There were yells and screams, and the clang of metal clashing against metal and wood and leather. Every now and then I saw someone fall and a sword blade plunge downwards. There was the clatter of wood and iron as spears crashed down onto the cart, one or two sticking into the wood. Once a spear came down between the wheels and dug into the ground right next to me.
I looked out and saw Pentheus standing by the tent, sword at the ready, as a giant of a man rushed at him with a two-handed axe. Pentheus waited until the man was almost upon him and then, as the axe began its swing downwards towards him, he slid to one side and thrust the short sword forward, and the axeman ran onto the point of the sword. Blood gushed from the man’s chest as he collapsed to the ground, the axe crashing down and the blade embedding itself heavily in the turf.
As suddenly as it had begun, it was all over. The attackers turned and fled back to the cover of the trees and bushes from where they’d come. I expected the Romans to go after them, but they didn’t.
Pentheus bent down and called: “You can come out now,” and Talos and I crawled out from under the cart.
It looked as if it had only been a small skirmish. One Roman lay on the ground, but he was moving and being attended to. I counted eight bodies of the attackers, including the axeman Pentheus had killed.
A Roman soldier came running towards us, sword still in hand. I recognized him as one of the officers.
“Pentheus!” he shouted angrily.
“What?” asked Pentheus.
The officer pointed to me.
“We had our orders,” he said. “If the Britons attacked us this boy was to be killed at once.”
Pentheus shook his head.
“Our orders were to kill him if the Brigantes attacked us,” he said. He gestured at the dead warriors lying on the ground. “These are not Brigantes, they are Caledonians. Look at the patterns of their warpaint.”
The officer glared at Pentheus, incredulous.
“We were under attack and you had time to look at the paint on their bodies?!” he snarled.
“Yes,” said Pentheus.
The officer stood glaring at Pentheus for a brief moment. He was still angry, but if Pentheus was right, then there was nothing he could do. Then he turned to the other Romans and shouted: “Gather up the bodies of this scum and hang them from those trees as a warning to anyone else!”
The Romans went off about their task. Talos and I walked with Pentheus towards the tent. I was still puzzled by much of what had happened, but especially by Pentheus’s action. I waited until we were out of earshot of the Romans, then said: “Are you sure they were Caledonians who attacked us and not Brigantes, Pentheus?”
Pentheus shrugged.
“Does that matter? You are alive, warrior prince. Thanks to Talos.”
Yes, I thought. Thanks to Talos, who had stood in the way of the soldier and had struggled with him to stop him killing me. I looked at Talos and bowed my head.
“Thank you, Talos,” I said. “I owe you my life.”
Talos smiled and gave one of his shrugs, with which I was getting familiar. It seemed to cover everything.
Chapter X
By early afternoon we were back on our journey eastwards. Once again Talos was sitting on the seat at the front of the cart next to Pentheus, who held the reins of the horse, and I sat in the back of the cart. However, this time I was not tied up.
Another change was that this time we only had half of the Roman soldiers marching with us. The rest were still hard at work building the road. Pentheus said the other soldiers would join us as soon as they had finished that stretch of road. Meanwhile our support of about 2,500 soldiers marched in front of and behind the cart along the line of the track.
As we moved off I looked towards the trees, where the eight bodies of the British warriors now hung from their branches like dead crows.
I was still puzzled by what Pentheus had said about the warriors being Caledonian and not Brigantes. How could he tell? The patterns with which warriors paint themselves, with blue dye from the plant known as woad, before going into battle, do not vary greatly from tribe to tribe, only from person to person. We Britons are Celts from the great Celtic race, whether Brigante or Trinovante or Caledonian, or from across the water to the west where the Isles lie. Even more puzzling was that the Caledonian tribes live much further north, in the mountains of the high lands. The tribe immediately north of where we had been attacked was the Novantae. Either the Caledonians had come much further south than usual, or Pentheus knew more than I did about the patterns painted by warriors, or he had lied. But why would he lie? And why had Talos put his life at risk by standing between me and the soldier who had been going to kill me? This was war. The Romans were the invaders and we, the Britons, were fighting them. In a war people died. I was a British warrior. Pentheus and Talos were on the side of the Romans; so why would they side with me, their enemy, and protect me? It did not make sense.
For the next six days we continued eastwards. The days carried on in the same routine, day after day: Pentheus marked out another stretch of road and the soldiers began to dig a trench along the line and fill it with stones. I estimated that the building was going at the rate of a mile of road a day. Sometimes more was done, sometimes less, depending on how rocky or how marshy the ground was, but it averaged a mile a day.
After a few days I accepted Pentheus’s offer to share the tent with him and Talos. It was either that or be tied to the cart like a dog. Also, Talos had saved my life and it seemed to me it would be an insult to him to refuse.
In the evenings, after work had ended, we would sit around a small fire outside our tent and eat a meal that either Pentheus or Talos had prepared. Every two days Talos would go to the supply wagons at the rear of the column and return with a few vegetables and some dried meat or fish for our food. Even though I was determined to spy on the Romans so I could report back, I was glad that we did not eat with the soldiers. I owed my life to Talos, and also to Pentheus, so although I did not trust them completely, I felt comfortable talking with them as we ate. They, like me, weren’t Romans. Though Pentheus and Talos worked with the Romans building this road, I felt that we shared one thing: we had all been taken prisoner by the Romans.
Pentheus told me about the country he came from, Greece, and how its culture was even older than the Romans’. According to Pentheus, the Romans had stolen many Greek ideas in engineering and science and medicine and claimed them as their own.
I, in turn, told them about my own culture: the Celtic culture, and how we were part of a race of people that stretched from the very top of Caledonia in the north, right down across Britannia to the very south, and across the sea to Gaul and Spain.
One thing that fascinated me was the way that Talos joined in the conversations. He had a whole range of facial expressions: drooping the corners of his mouth to show sadness, a broad smile to show happiness, a grimace to express pain. These were combined with shrugs and shakes of his shoulders, and different gestures with his hands and arms, and I found he was able to make me understand exactly what he wanted to say. Pretty soon I had forgotten that he couldn’t actually speak because I knew what he was “saying”, and I found myself replying to him with similar gestures of my hands and different expressions with my face.
One evening, Pentheus and Talos told me their story.
“The Romans invaded Greece many years before I was born,” said Pentheus. “But the part my family came from was on the fringes of the country and was seen as mostly harmless, so there wasn’t a great Roman presence. After my older brother, Lemos, and I had finished our basic education, we were sent by our parents to Egypt to learn engineeri
ng skills. The Egyptians are some of the greatest and most skilled engineers the world has ever known. The pyramids there are amazing structures; huge, and very complicated. Yet they were built thousands of years ago. The Romans, of course, had also conquered and occupied most of Egypt.
“Lemos and I did our training as engineers in Egypt for four years, and then we returned to our family in Greece. At first, things were much as they had been before. Lemos and I began to work as engineers, designing buildings for local rich people. Lemos got married to his childhood sweetheart, Mela, and they had this young rascal here.”
He gestured at Talos, who grinned broadly.
Pentheus shrugged. “Whether there was something wrong with the birth that stopped Talos from speaking, we don’t know. At first we just noticed that he didn’t cry like other babies, and thought it must be because he was very happy and so didn’t need to make a fuss. Then, as time went by, Lemos and Mela became concerned and took Talos to be examined by a doctor, who said his tongue was fine and moved well, but suggested there must be something wrong with the voice box in his throat.
“For Lemos and Mela it didn’t matter, in every other aspect Talos was a perfectly normal child: irritating, annoying, always getting in the way.”
Talos grinned broadly at this and laughed silently, and made a friendly gesture towards Pentheus with his fist, as if he would get him later for those remarks.
“But what happened to Lemos and Mela?” I asked.
Pentheus sighed, and an unhappy expression came over his face.
“For some reason a few of our local politicians started saying that in our area we weren’t Greek enough, there had been too much Roman influence. To be honest, it was all so much hot air. Typical politicians. They always have to be saying something, whether it makes sense or not. Most of the time they just give speeches to curry favour with the people they want to get money and advantages from. Unfortunately, word of what these politicians were saying spread, and the local Roman governor decided it might lead to an uprising. The Romans are quick to put down any hint of a rebellion against their rule. They sent a legion to our area and soldiers were sent out to round up suspected agitators. Unfortunately their methods were crude and brutal. Anyone they thought looked suspicious, they broke into their house and dragged them off for questioning, trying to find out who the agitators were. Of course, the real agitators were the politicians who’d started it, but most of them fled as soon as they heard the soldiers were coming.
“Unfortunately, some people used the presence of the soldiers to settle old quarrels, or get rid of rivals. My brother and I were very successful in our business as engineers, and I think that one of our rivals used the situation to try and close us down. Someone whispered to the soldiers that Lemos was an agitator. That was all it needed. The soldiers stormed into his house to arrest him. Lemos wasn’t there, so they began searching the house for him in the way that soldiers do: smashing doors, breaking open outhouses. Mela urged the soldiers to take care because of the baby, Talos, but you know what soldiers can be like. The soldiers beat her and threw her out of the house into the street.
“By this time Lemos had received word of what was happening so he hurried home. When he saw Mela lying in the road, her face bloody and bruised, he lost his temper and grabbed one of the soldiers. That was it. The soldiers killed him. Mela got to her feet and tried to stop them, but they killed her as well.
“I was out of town that day on a job in a distant village, but a messenger told me what had happened, and I hurried home. When I got there, order had been restored. The Roman commander in charge of the local troops was unhappy with what had happened because Lemos was a very respectable citizen, and he knew the whole thing had just got out of hand, but that’s what sometimes happens when soldiers are in an occupying land. I was furious and told the commander I wanted the soldiers who had killed my brother and his wife charged with murder. All that did was mark me down as a troublemaker.
“I spent six months in a Roman prison. It was hard and brutal. When I came out I returned home to find that both my parents had died. I think the tragedy of the deaths of Lemos and Mela, and then my being thrown into prison, broke their hearts. All our money had gone. Talos had been taken in and cared for by some servants who had worked for my family for years.
“The Roman commander who’d had me arrested was still in charge of the troops in our area, and even though he would never admit it, he knew his soldiers had been wrong, as he’d been by sending me to prison. He knew that Lemos and I had been the best engineers in the whole area, and he offered me a deal: to work for the Romans as an engineer, or be tried for inciting a rebellion. The sentence for that was death.
“I weighed the situation up. Talos was now nearly a year old. I was his only family. The servants who were looking after him were very old, and I knew they wouldn’t be able to look after him for much longer. What would happen to him once they had to give him up? Where would he go? An orphanage? And what sort of future would he have?”
Pentheus shrugged.
“I agreed to work for the Romans, as long as I could take Talos with me. Which meant they would have to provide me with a nurse for him. The commander agreed. I soon proved to him what he’d already heard: that I was a really good engineer. Word spread about my work, and I began to be moved about from area to area, wherever there was a large building project to be done. As time went on, I found myself being sent to different parts of the empire to supervise different building projects, usually the most difficult ones. And everywhere I went, I took Talos with me so that he could grow up and watch and learn to be an engineer as well, if he wanted.”
Talos nodded energetically, with a happy smile on his face. Yes, he wanted to be an engineer. He mimed working, his face a grimace, and then he wiped imaginary sweat from his brow. I knew what he was saying: he would work as hard as he could, harder than anyone else, to be a good engineer. Then he slapped his hand to his chest and held up a finger, his face now proud. No, he was telling us, not just a good engineer, the best engineer. Number One.
“It’s a good ambition.” Pentheus nodded to Talos approvingly.
“Working for the Romans?” I queried.
“To be the best at what you do,” replied Pentheus. Then he yawned. “Now, after all that talking, I think we had better get some sleep. If you want to be the best, Talos, what do you have to do?”
Talos mimed going to sleep, then he opened his eyes and flapped his hands together as if they were little wings.
“Exactly,” said Pentheus. “Be up with the morning birds. Get a head start while your rivals are still asleep.” To me, he said: “And that’s a lesson for all of us, Bran.”
Chapter XI
That night, after Pentheus and Talos had told me their story, I went to the animal skin on which I slept and lay awake for a good while, thinking about the sort of childhood Talos had had. My own father had been killed by the Romans, but in battle. Talos’s parents had been murdered, and then he’d lived a roaming life as he grew up, following Pentheus and the Roman legions over the whole empire. He had no home except the Roman army. Greece was just a name to him, a country far, far away in distance and in his memory. For me, this place was still my home. It was where I was born, where I had grown up among my own family and my own tribe.
As I lay there in the tent I thought of my mother and Aithne, and the story Pentheus had told about the soldiers killing Lemos and Mela to put down a rebellion. Were the soldiers near my home village doing the same thing even now? Were they going into my village and attacking and killing? Were my mother and Aithne safe?
I wished they could get a message to me in some way to let me know they were alive and well. I wanted to know that they were all right. And, if they were all right, I wanted them to know that I was safe and well and being taken care of.
That night I prayed to the god Lug to send my mother and Aithne my thoughts, and asked him to send theirs to me. A sign of some kind: an ant moving acro
ss the skin; a mouse scuttling across the tent in a particular pattern, anything so long as it was a sign to let me know they were all right and knew that I was safe. But though I lay awake for what seemed like hours waiting for a sign of some sort, none came, and eventually I fell asleep.
The next day the road building continued. As always, the soldiers worked on a rota, with different squads of soldiers engaged in different tasks. Some digging, some breaking and moving stones, some on sentry duty, and others training.
Today I noticed they weren’t just training in the way they had done before: exercising and practising their fighting techniques. They were practising moving in large formations, sometimes as many as a hundred men moving as one, using their shields as a huge cover over them all.
Pentheus and Talos joined me as I watched the soldiers at their practice. A group of eighty soldiers were standing rigidly to attention in what was almost a square, made up of ten men one way by eight men the other. At a shout from the officer in charge the ones in the outer ranks lifted their long shields up so that the top of the shield was at eye level, and all the soldiers inside the square placed their shields flat on top of their heads, so that together they made a roof. Then, at another shout from the officer, they began to move forward at speed. Another shout and they stopped.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” said Pentheus beside me. “They call that movement the Tortoise.”
I gave him a puzzled look at this strange word.
“Why?” I asked. “What is a tortoise?”
Pentheus picked up a stick and drew a circle in the dust of the ground.
“A tortoise is an animal which lives in a hard shell,” he said, pointing to the circle on the ground. He used the sticks to draw four legs and a head sticking out of the circle. “When danger comes, the tortoise retreats inside its shell and it’s safe. Just like those soldiers inside their shell made of shields.”
I looked at the soldiers practising and saw what Pentheus meant. The soldiers’ shields made a protective shell over the whole group, just like that of a tortoise. Any arrows fired at them, or spears thrown, would just bounce off.