by Jim Eldridge
Chapter XVI
After Pentheus and Talos had gone back into the tent, I sat on the cart and thought about Simeon. I knew that wasn’t the end of it. I could tell by the anger in his eyes. He would try again, and the next time he might succeed. In one way I was relieved: I knew now what was to be my punishment. Instead of a wild animal to tear me to pieces or lightning to strike me dead, the Goddess had sent a Roman soldier to kill me after all.
I must have finally fallen asleep because I found myself being shaken awake by Pentheus.
“How do you feel, young warrior?” he asked with a smile, trying to cheer me up. “See, it is dawn and you are still alive. Your gods have decided to let you live after all.”
I forced a smile back at him, even though I didn’t believe it. Suddenly, I blurted out: “Pentheus, what does ‘decimation’ mean?” The word the soldier had uttered had been puzzling me all night.
Pentheus frowned.
“Where did you hear that word?” he asked.
“Last night,” I said. “When Simeon was here, one of the soldiers told him to leave me alone. He said if he didn’t they’d suffer something called ‘decimation’.”
Pentheus nodded.
“He could well be right,” he said. “You are a hostage by order of the governor. That means you are to be kept alive so the road can go through. If a Roman soldier killed you – except under orders, that is – then that could be seen as an offence against the governor; which would be treason. And treason and mutiny in a legion are usually punished by decimation. Decimation means killing every tenth man. It happens if there is suspicion of rebellion or mutiny fermenting in a legion. Every tenth man is executed.”
I looked at him, shocked.
“But in a legion of five thousand men…”
Pentheus nodded.
“Yes, the Romans will kill five hundred of their own soldiers without hesitation, if they think it will keep the others in line. As I said before, the Romans rule by fear.”
Talos had now appeared beside the cart and clapped his hands together, and then gestured towards the distant east. He had an impatient look on his face.
“Yes, quite right, Talos,” smiled Pentheus. “I have been talking too long.” To me he said: “We are moving on from this place this morning. We have a road to build, remember. So, once we have eaten you can give Talos a hand packing our things up and putting them onto the cart, and we can be on our way.”
I forced myself to eat some breakfast: a few nuts and some pieces of fruit, and was surprised to find that I was actually hungry. Then I realized that it had been more than a day since I had last eaten anything.
After breakfast Talos and I fed and watered the horse and harnessed her to the cart, then packed the tent away and put everything onto the back of the cart. That done, I climbed into the back while Talos and Pentheus took their places on the seat at the front.
During all this, the section of Roman soldiers who would be travelling with us had formed into ranks in front of and behind the cart: six men across, with the officer in charge at the front.
I noticed that Simeon was in the front row of the soldiers following behind our cart, and as I looked at him he gave me a scowl. It was as I thought: he was determined to take his vengeance on me if he got an opportunity.
Pentheus flicked the reins and the horse began to amble forward, pulling the cart after it with a jerk, and then we were rolling, the soldiers’ boots slamming down on the ground as they marched, while the officer in charge shouted out the beat for them to march to: “Sinister! Dexter! Sinister! Dexter!”, which I had discovered were the words the Romans used for “Left! Right! Left! Right!”
Behind us we left yet another party of Roman soldiers laying the section of road: digging the trench, hauling stones, banging them into place. We also left the dead from the battle: the British warriors hung from trees, and the Roman soldiers buried in graves marked with stone headstones. I saw the gravestones from a distance, and noticed that someone had left a small bunch of flowers on top of one, and I knew that must be the grave of Asras, and that the flowers had been left there by Simeon. I looked again at Simeon, trying to read the expression on his face, but there was none. Like the rest of the soldiers he looked straight ahead, his face and eyes blank as he marched, wearing a full weight of armour, his pack on his back, along with his spears and sword, a shovel, a leather satchel of food rations; everything a soldier needed to survive for three days.
He must hate me very much, I thought. He must hate us Britons. He must hate being here in this country. I wondered where he was from. Pentheus had said the Roman army was made up of soldiers from many different countries. I wondered if Simeon and Asras had been from a conquered country, given the choice, join the army or die; or had they volunteered? But most of all I wondered: when was he going to try to kill me?
Chapter XVII
For the next few days life continued in much the same way as it had done for the past weeks: a stretch of road was marked out under Pentheus’s direction and construction of it began. As soon as a party of soldiers joined us after working on an earlier part of the road, our cart set off again with these new men marching with us, ready to mark out and build the next section. I noticed that Simeon and his group of eight were never far from our cart. Whether Simeon had persuaded his comrades to volunteer to keep marching rather than digging, or whether it was the way the system worked, I didn’t know. All I knew was that Simeon was always there. My guess was that he was so consumed with hatred for me over what had happened to his brother that he was still intent on killing me as the nearest Briton to hand. For my part, I believed that he was the deliverer of my punishment from the gods and that some time soon he would kill me. It was my fate. Even though I knew my punishment was expected, I still could not help worrying about it. I wanted to have courage and die bravely when Simeon finally found a way to kill me. I didn’t say any of this to Pentheus and Talos because I thought Pentheus would just dismiss it or mock me for my beliefs.
I had gone back to sleeping in the tent at night with Pentheus and Talos now, and joining them for meals. Now I knew what my punishment was to be, I no longer needed to punish myself or stay out in the open and wait for it to happen.
By the morning of the 28th day, 26 miles of road had been constructed and we stood and watched the soldiers beginning work on building the second fort.
“Fourteen miles of road to go and it will be all over,” said Pentheus. “It has been a good road to build.”
“It has been a bad road,” I said. “It will lead to the Romans ruling us completely.”
Pentheus shook his head.
“Perhaps one day the Romans will be gone,” he said. “When they do, this road will still be here and your people will use it. They will say to themselves, this is a good road.”
Talos nodded in agreement.
“A road is never just a road,” I countered. “Nor is a fort just a fort. It’s made for a purpose, and that purpose is not always for good.”
Pentheus laughed.
“For one so young you are a philosopher,” he said. “You would have done well in the schools of Greece, where debate and argument are taught as a high art. Some scholars have been known to discuss the finer points of something for weeks, and still never reach an agreement.” He grinned. “But we are just engineers, not scholars. We don’t have time to spend on lofty arguments, we have practical things to do. Like make sure the latrines work.” He gestured towards the fort. “Do you want to come and check with us?”
“I thought you said the soldiers didn’t need your help in building a fort?” I queried. “You said they are all built the same way.”
“And they are,” agreed Pentheus. “But now and then I like to check that the invisible things work. The hidden pipes. The wells for getting fresh water.”
I followed Pentheus and Talos to where the fort was under construction. As with the previous fort, soldiers were constructing the outer defences by fixing tree trun
ks together in high walls, with earth piled against the timber. Inside, others were marking out areas for the buildings such as the granary, where the grain was kept, and the commander’s rooms. We arrived at one place where two long ditches were being dug. I noticed that these two ditches joined up again at one end, and then ran into another much deeper ditch, which led to a deep pit.
At the other end of the two ditches a box had been carved out of a large boulder.
“There,” said Pentheus pointing to this stone box. “Water from a stream will be piped down to that stone box.” Pointing to the two ditches, he explained: “Long wooden boxes will be built over those two ditches, and all the way along the tops of the wooden boxes holes will be made where the soldiers can sit and go to the toilet. The muck falls down into the ditch, and every so often the water in the stone box is released and flushes the muck away, into the deeper ditch from where it then goes into that pit.”
I shook my head.
“It looks like a lot of bother just to go to the toilet,” I said. “Why don’t they just go out into the woods and do it, like we do?”
“Because it won’t be safe for them if they leave the fort on their own,” explained Pentheus. “And if they just went to the toilet inside the fort, pretty soon the place would be a stinking place filled with disease. This way, the muck gets taken away by the water and put into a pit.”
“It will still stink,” I pointed out. “There will still be disease.”
Talos shook his head, and mimed digging earth and spreading it.
“That’s right, Talos.” Pentheus nodded. “Every so often, the muck is covered with earth, which stops the smell.”
“And what happens when the pit is full?” I asked.
“Another pit is dug and the drainage ditch is redirected to the new one. And, by the time that one is full, the muck in the old pit has been rotted down and can be dug out and used as manure. And then that pit can be used again.”
He smiled.
“Trust me, Bran, it’s a system that works. It’s very simple. Most important of all, it stops the spread of disease. One of the reasons the Roman soldiers are stronger than nearly everyone else is because they are healthier. They keep themselves clean by bathing every day. A Roman soldier signs on in the army for 25 years. Many of them are 40 years old when they retire. Some even older. How many of your tribe live beyond 30 years old?”
“Many!” I said, adding defiantly: “Anyway, we prefer to die in battle rather than sit around in old age doing nothing.”
“And that is another reason why the Romans will beat you,” said Pentheus. “The way to win a war is to get your enemy to die in battle, not for your own warriors to die.” He looked serious, and then added: “There has been a point in showing you this, Bran. Not simply to show you latrines, but to show you that the Romans think of everything, even down to the most hygienic way for Roman soldiers to go to the toilet. Their weapons, their armour, their discipline, their forts, their roads, their food, their water and sewage systems, everything is very carefully worked out down to the last detail. That is why they will beat you.”
“You’ve said that before, and I tell you we will win,” I replied firmly.
“No,” said Pentheus equally firmly, shaking his head. “And if you try you will die and so will many of your people. And at the end the Romans will still have won, but hundreds of your people will have died for no reason. I like you, Bran. You are a good and brave person, and one day you will be king of your tribe, if you live that long. Your people will take their orders from you. If you carry on this war of resistance, you will be sentencing many of your people to death. Perhaps your whole tribe will be wiped out. When this road is finished and you go home to your own people, you must tell them what you’ve seen and tell them they have to submit to the Romans now, before more of your people die.”
I shook my head.
“I cannot, Pentheus,” I said. “We did not ask the Romans to come here. We want to be Britons, not Romans. And the Caledonians have shown the Romans can be beaten.”
Pentheus sighed. “I’ve said before, Bran, your people are not the Caledonians. And the Romans will beat the Caledonians, mark my words.”
He turned and looked at the soldiers, hard at work constructing the fort.
“Come,” he said. “We’ll leave these conquerors of the world to their work. We have the rest of this road to finish.”
Chapter XVIII
We journeyed onward to prepare the next stage of the road, Pentheus and Talos at the seat on the front of the cart, and me in the back, as always. I looked out at the surrounding country and thought about what Pentheus had said about the Romans, and about giving in. At one level, to the head, it made sense. The longer the battle against the Romans went on, the more Britons would die. The Romans had arrived in Britain with their legions well before my father and mother had even been born. In the time they had been here, hundreds of thousands of Britons had been killed fighting against them, including my own father. My cousins Carac, Ventius and Awyn were already on their way to Rome in chains, where they would be killed for the Romans’ entertainment in the circus arena. So many of my tribespeople had died, and we still seemed to be no nearer to gaining freedom from Roman rule. This road that we were building would only tighten the Roman grip on us even more. Perhaps it was better to give up the fight now, as Pentheus said. Accept Roman rule, and perhaps prosper under it, as had happened to people in other countries the Romans had conquered.
But that was the head speaking. Inside my heart my spirit cried out “No!”
We were Britons! We must not let our whole culture be crushed out of existence by these invaders. Everything we were, the way we spoke, the way we dressed, our gods and goddesses, our music, our houses, the way we prepared our food, the way we buried our dead and honoured our heroes, all of these had been our way of life for thousands of years. Our ancestors had died to work this land and make it ours. Their blood had soaked this ground as they had fought to carve out a safe place to live for future generations. They had done that for my parents, and for me, and for my children, should I survive to have any. For Aithne’s children, and her children’s children. We were Carvetii and Brigantes. We would not be Romans! Even if it took another hundred years, our people would come through this! Our voices and our way of life would survive!
For the next ten days we moved ever further eastwards, marking out the road and forts as we went. Pentheus, Talos and I made camp for two nights while Pentheus marked out the next section of road, then we moved on, leaving the soldiers hard at work constructing the road. And still Simeon was in the party that accompanied us, just behind our cart.
By now we were well on our way towards the river that ran down to the east coast, which would mark the end of the road. We were in territory that I had never been in before. Behind us the wide stone road stretched out into the west like a river. Thirty-five miles of road had been completed with two timber and turf forts built at intervals along the way. Since that last attack, there had been no further attacks on the party by any British warriors, but I knew in my heart that attack had not been the last. I was sure the tribes would not allow this road to be finished.
I thought of my mother and Aithne, now so far away. Here, the Carvetii would be known only as a small tribe in the far west. I wondered if word about our progress had managed to get from the Brigantes here to my Carvetii tribe, and if that word would include the fact that a young British prince was still with the Romans. I hoped so, so that my mother would know I was still alive. So far.
By now we had left the high plains and moors and were heading down towards the flat lands of the coastal area. Our column was travelling eastwards through a long valley, with vast areas of thick forests stretching up the slopes on either side, to the north and to the south. As always, Pentheus, Talos and I were on the cart in the middle. We were halfway through the valley when I heard strange and eerie sounds coming from the forests on the ridge about a mile to our le
ft, to the north. It was like wild animals calling to one another, or like birds cawing, but this sound was unlike any animal or bird I’d heard before. Then there came a drumming, as if something unseen was beating against the trees of the forests. The drumming sound became louder and louder, at the same time as the calls of the birds and animals, and now I could hear human voices among the calls, shouting and hooting and wailing.
At a shouted command from the officer at the front, the whole column stopped and stood to attention. Pentheus pulled the cart to a halt. The sound from the forested slopes to the north was getting louder and louder, and suddenly, out from the trees came an army. No, an army doesn’t even begin to describe it: it was an enormous mass of men. It was the biggest army I had ever seen. If the Roman legion had started out with five thousand men, this was at least twice as large: ten thousand warriors, possibly more.
From this distance I could see that all were armed: holding spears or swords. Some had shields. There were also chariots appearing from between the trees; war chariots each pulled by a single horse. And all the time the noise continued, getting louder and louder, then dying down to a murmur, then rising again, as if it was a war chant.
“Caledonians,” murmured Pentheus.
“They outnumber the soldiers five to one,” I said, awed. “They will kill us all.”
Then, from the forest-covered ridge to the south, came the sound of more wailing and yelling and banging, and even more Caledonian warriors appeared: maybe another ten thousand, banging on their shields and calling.
A chill went down my spine. Twenty thousand fierce Caledonians against just two thousand Romans. No matter how strong and well disciplined the Romans were, this was going to be a massacre.
I saw the commanding officer speak to four soldiers, who immediately threw off their packs and began to run along the road back the way we had come.