Coalescent

by Stephen Baxter

  "That's true. I ought to go."

  "Come back and tell me what you find."

  Chapter 7

  Magnus sat cross-legged, hunched over the little wooden game board.

  Magnus was a great bear of a man with a head the size of a pumpkin, it seemed to Regina, a head so big his helmet seemed to perch on top of it. But then, his helmet wasn't actually his but had been passed on to him from another soldier, just as had his sword and shield. Meanwhile his cowhide boots and his woolen tunic and his cucullus, his heavy hooded cloak, had all been made in the village behind the Wall, nothing to do with military issue at all. That awkward secondhand helmet had a dent in it, big enough to have held a goose's egg. Regina wondered sometimes if the mighty blow that had inflicted the hollow had been the cause of the original owner's "retirement."

  For all his bulk Magnus was a patient man, which was why Aetius approved of him as a companion for Regina. After five years on the Wall she thought she knew her way around, but some of the rougher soldiers, she had been told in no uncertain terms, were not suitable companions for the prefect's twelve-year-old granddaughter.

  Magnus was a good man, then. But he was so slow. His great ham of a hand hovered briefly over the board, but then he withdrew it.

  "Oh, Magnus, come on," Regina pleaded. "What's so difficult? It's only a game of soldiers, and we've barely started. The position's simple."

  "We haven't all got a prefect's blood in our veins, miss," he murmured laconically. He settled himself more comfortably, his spear cradled against his chest, and resumed his patient inspection of the board.

  "Well, my backside is getting cold," she said. She jumped to her feet and began to pace up and down along the little tiled ridge behind the battlements.

  It was a bright autumn day, and the northern British sky was a deep, rich blue. This was a sentry's lookout point, here on the wall of the fortress of Brocolitia — in fact, strictly speaking Magnus was on sentry duty right now — and she could see across the countryside, to the farthest horizon in every direction. The land here was rolling moorland, bleak even at the height of midsummer, and as autumn drew in it was bleaker still. There was no sign of life save for a single thread of black smoke that rose toward the sky, far to the north, so far away its source was lost in the mist that lingered even now, so close to noon.

  And if she looked to left or right, to east and west, she could see the line of the Wall itself, striding away across a natural ridge of hard, black rock.

  The Wall was a curtain of tiled brick and concrete, everywhere at least five times a man's height. A steep-sloped ditch ran along the north side. It was clogged with rubbish and weeds — and in some places the detritus of battles, broken sword blades and dented shields and smashed wheels; sometimes the hairy folk from the north would creep down to scavenge bits of iron. To the south, beyond the line of the road that ran parallel to the Wall, was another broad trench called the vallum. The vallum had been filled in here and there, to provide easier access between the fortresses on the Wall itself and the muddy little community of huts and roundhouses that had, over the generations, grown up to the south.

  It was thrilling to think that the Wall's great line was drawn right across the neck of the country. On a clear day she could see the sentries walking back and forth along its length, all the way to the horizon, like ants on a bit of string. And while on the north side there was nothing but moorland, heather, and garbage, on the south side there was a whole string of communities, inhabited by the soldiers and their families, and those who lived off them. It was like a single town, some of the soldiers said, a Thin Town eighty miles long, a belt of drinking and whoring and cockfighting and gambling, and other vices she understood even less.

  But much had changed during the Wall's long lifetime — so she had learned from Aetius's dogged teaching. The threat the Wall faced had evolved. Compared to the scattered, disunited tribes faced by Hadrian who'd built the Wall in the first place, today's great barbarian nations, like the Picts to the north of the Wall, were a much more formidable proposition.

  Once, Aetius said, the Empire's military might had been like the snail of a shell: break through it and you were into the soft, defenseless core of the settled provinces. After the disastrous barbarian incursions of the recent past, that lesson had been learned well. For all its imposing presence, today the Wall was only part of a deep defensive system. Far behind the line of the Wall there were forts in the Pennines and farther south, from where any barbarian incursion could be countered. And north of the Wall itself there were more forts — though few of them manned these days. More effective were the arcani who worked among the northern tribes, spies spreading dissension and rumor and bringing back information about possible threats.

  Regina had grown to love the Wall. Of course it showed its age. Much of this old fortress had been demolished or abandoned, for much smaller units were stationed here now. And time had inevitably ravaged the great structure. Some of the repair work was visibly cruder than the fine work of earlier generations — in places the old stonework had even been patched up with turf and rubble. But the barbarians had always been pushed back, the Wall reoccupied, the damage by friend or foe repaired, and so it would always be. In the five years since Aetius had brought her here, enclosed by its massive stones, she had come to feel safe, protected by the Wall and the power and continuity it represented.

  Conversely, though, she was prone to anxiety over the future. Overall there were far fewer soldiers in Britain than in the past, Aetius said: perhaps ten thousand now, compared to fifty thousand before the disastrous imperial adventure of Constantius, which had stripped Britain of its field troops. Two nights ago a red glow had been easily visible in the night sky to the east, and in the morning there was a great pall of smoke, coming from the direction of the next fortress to the east, Cilurnum. Troops had been dispatched there to find out what had happened, and hadn't yet returned — or if they had, Aetius wasn't saying so to her. Well, there was nothing she could do about that.

  Regina shivered, and rubbed her arms to warm up. The Wall might be a safe place, but it was uncomfortable. The great masses of stone retained the cold all through the day. After five years here, though, she had gotten used to the brisk climate and needed nothing more to keep her warm but her thick woolen tunic. And she had learned never to complain about the rigors of life here, so stripped-down compared to life in the villa, which she still remembered brightly. She had no wish to be called a spoiled child again, even though she knew that as the granddaughter of the prefect she was given special privileges.

  "...Ah," Magnus said.

  She walked back to him. "Don't tell me you've moved at last, O Great General."

  "No. But your grandfather's come out to play." He pointed.

  On the southern side of the Wall, Aetius had led his cohort out of the fortress and was drawing them up on parade. Aetius stood straight and tall, an example to his troops. But Regina understood how much effort that cost him, for at sixty-five years old he was plagued by arthritic pains.

  The soldiers' helmets and shields gleamed in the sun, and most of them wore the chill, expressionless bronze parade masks that had so terrified her when she first saw them. But their lines were ragged, with many gaps, and Aetius, waving his arms with exasperation, called out the names of the missing: "Marinus! Paternus! Andoc! Mavilodo!..."

  Regina knew how infuriating Aetius found such ill discipline and lack of professionalism. Aetius had once served with the comitatensis forces, the highly mobile, well-equipped field army. Now he found himself the prefect of a cohort of the limitaneus, the static border army, and things were very different. These frontier troops had been on station here for generations. Indeed, nowadays most of them were drawn from the local people. According to Aetius, the limitaneus troops had become thoroughly indolent, even immoral. He raged at their habit of bringing actors, acrobats, and whores into the fortress itself, and their tendency to drink and even sleep when on watch.

>   All this was cause for concern, to say the least. Without a meaningful comitatensis in the country, these ragtag troops were all that stood between civilized Britain and the barbarians. And it was up to Aetius to hold them together.

  Aetius consulted a clay tablet and called out a name. One unfortunate trooper stepped forward, a burly, harmless-looking man who didn't look as if he could run a thousand paces, let alone fight off a barbarian horde.

  "I was only drinking wine to wash down horehound to get rid of my cough, Prefect."

  "Do we not treat you well? Do you not enjoy medical attention even the citizens of Londinium would not be able to obtain? And is this how you repay us, by dereliction of duty?"

  Regina knew that Aetius's scolding was harder for the miscreant troopers to bear than the lashings that would follow. But now the fat soldier lifted up his arm and shook it, so his bronze purse rattled. "And is this how the Emperor repays me? When was the last time you were paid, Prefect?"

  Aetius drew himself up. "You are paid in kind. The temporary lack of coin—"

  "I must still buy my clothes and my weapons, and bribe that old fool Percennius to give somebody else the latrine duty." There was laughter at that. "And all for the privilege of waiting for a poke up the arse from some Pict's wooden spear. Why do you think Paternus and the others have run off?"

  Regina stared; she had never seen such defiance. She was uneasily reminded of how that farmer had stood up to her father.

  But Aetius was not Marcus.

  Aetius took a single step forward and slammed his gloved hand against the man's temple. To the clang of bone on metal, the man fell sideways into the dirt. Grunting, he rolled on his back — and, Regina saw, he actually touched the hilt of the short sword at his waist. But Aetius stood over him, fists bunched, until he dropped his hand and looked away.

  The rest of the troop stood utterly silent.

  Aetius pointed at two of them. "You and you. Take him. A hundred strokes for drinking on guard, and a hundred more for what he has had to say today."

  The men didn't move. Even from here Regina could feel the tension. If they were to disobey Aetius's order now... She felt a hot flush in her belly, and wondered if that was fear.

  The two troopers, with every show of insolent reluctance, moved to their fallen colleague. But move they did. Aetius stepped back to let the man stand. His arms held behind his back, he was walked toward the whipping post. The tension bled out of the scene. But Regina still felt that odd warmth at her center.

  One of the troopers, glancing up, pointed at her. "Look! Septimius — look at that! The red rain has begun..." The other troopers looked up at Regina, and began to point and laugh. Aetius railed at them, but their discipline was gone now.

  She felt heat burn in her cheeks. She had no idea what she had done.

  Magnus was at her side. He put an arm around her and tried to pull her away. "Come now. Put my cloak around you. It's all right."

  "I don't understand," she said. And then she felt warmth on her legs. She looked down and saw blood, dripping out from beneath her tunic. She looked up in horror. "Magnus! What's happening to me? Am I dying?"

  For all his strength he looked as uncertain and as weak as a child; he couldn't meet her eyes. "Women's matters," he gasped.

  Now the soldiers were catcalling. "I've waited all these years for you to blossom, little flower!" "Come sit on me, your old friend Septimius!" "No, me! Me first!" One of them had lifted his tunic to pull out his penis, like a floppy piece of rope that he shook at her.

  Regina grabbed Magnus's heavy, musty-smelling woolen cloak and wrapped it around her. Then she clambered down the ladder to the ground and ran over the vallum toward the settlement, hiding her face.

  For all Aetius raged at them, the soldiers kept up the baffling, terrifying barrage.

  • • •

  In their five years together at the Wall, Aetius had tried to tell Regina something of the world beyond the Wall. "There's been an awful lot of trouble for everybody. It all started the night the Rhine froze over, and the barbarians just walked into Gaul. But for Britain that wretch Constantius was the one who nailed down the coffin lid..."

  The problems went Empire-wide, said Aetius. When the Empire had been expanding, new wealth had always been generated, from booty and taxation. But those days were long gone. And with the new, better-equipped, more powerful barbarian enemies, just as economic pressure increased, so did pressure on the borders, and more money had had to be found to pay for the defense of the realm. For a generation there had been problems and instability throughout the western provinces. Sometimes Aetius talked nostalgically about the great Stilicho, military commander in the western provinces, who had protected Britain. Aetius seemed to worship this Stilicho, even though, it turned out, he was a barbarian, Vandal-born. Barbarian or not, he had been the effective ruler of the west, under the ineffectual Emperor Honorius. But even the greatest generals grow feeble — and make lethal enemies at court.

  And in Britain, since Constantius's adventure, the problems had been particularly acute.

  After Constantius's subjects had thrown out his hierarchy of officials and tax collectors and inspectors, the cycle of taxation and state spending had broken down. Not only that, there was no mint in Britain, and after the expulsion of the moneymen there was no way to import coins from the rest of the Empire. Suddenly there weren't even any coins to circulate.

  As everybody hoarded what they had left, people returned to barter. But with its lifeblood of coinage cut off, the economy was rapidly withering.

  "There's just no money to pay the troops. You know, I heard that before I was posted here the soldiers even sent a deputation across the ocean to try to get the back pay they were owed. They never returned."

  "They must have found some other place to live."

  "Or had their throats slit by barbarians. We'll never know, will we? The people in the towns actually wrote to the Emperor himself and asked for help. This was only a few years ago. But by then, so it is said, Rome itself had been sacked by the barbarians. Honorius wrote back saying that the British must defend themselves as best they could..."

  Aetius was worried about Regina's future. That was why he lectured her about politics and history and wars. He thought it was important to equip her for the challenges of her life.

  And Aetius was obviously worried about his own future, too. If you completed twenty years' military service you could become one of the honestiores — the top folk in society. A career as a soldier was a way for a common man to retire to a nice house in the town or even a villa. But there was no obvious successor to Aetius, here in his station on the Wall, and he had no contact with the diocese's central command. If he stepped down, the troops would fall apart; he knew that. And besides there was nowhere for him to retire to. He had to hang on.

  "Look," he would say, "this nonsense in Gaul has to stop. Rome is already back on its feet, and when he gets the chance the Emperor will reassert his authority here."

  "And things will get back to normal."

  "Britain has been lost to the Empire before — oh, yes, many times — and each time won back. So it will be this time, I'm sure." And when that happened, at last, when the tax collectors returned and the coins started to circulate once more — when the soldiers were properly paid and equipped and there was a secure place for him to retire — Aetius could allow his own career to end.

  As it turned out, however, for Aetius it was all going to end much sooner than that. And far from everything returning to normal, Regina would have to suffer another great disruption.

  • • •

  After her humiliation before the soldiers, Regina fled to Cartumandua.

  Carta was cooking a haunch of pork wrapped in straw. She had hung a big iron cauldron from a tripod and was using tongs to load in fire-hot rocks from the hearth; they sizzled as they hit the water. Her house was a wooden shack, built in the rectangular Roman way. The "kitchen" was just a space around a hearth
built in a stone-lined pit, around which you would squat on the ground.

  When Regina came bursting in, weeping, Carta dropped the tongs and ran to meet her.

  "Carta, oh Carta, it was awful!"

  Carta held Regina's face to her none-too-clean woolen smock, and let her weep. "Hush, hush, child." She stroked Regina's hair as she had when Regina was a pampered child of the villa, and Cartumandua a young girl slave.

  Carta herself was still only twenty. Aetius had long made her a freedwoman, and allowed her to seek out her own destiny in this little below-the-Wall community, but she still had room in her life for Regina.

  When Regina had calmed down enough to show her the blood, Carta clucked disapprovingly. "And nobody told you about this? Certainly not that old fool Aetius, I'll bet."

  Regina gazed in renewed horror at the dried blood. "Carta — I'm afraid I'm dying. There must be something terribly wrong."

  "No. There's nothing wrong — nothing save that you're twelve years old." And Carta patiently explained to her what had happened to her body, and helped her clean herself, and showed her how to pad herself with a loincloth tied with cords.

  In the middle of this Severus came in, carrying a bundle of firewood. He was a soldier, a heavyset man, his stubble grimed with dirt. He glared at Regina. She had never seen him performing strictly military duties. He only ever worked around the little village, carrying food, repairing buildings, even working in the fields where oats were grown and cattle fed. In the shadow of the Wall the lines between the soldiers and the rest of the population had gotten very blurred, especially since marriage between the locals and the soldiers had been made legal.

  Regina didn't like Severus. She had always hoped that Carta would take up with Macco, the stolid, silent slave who had accompanied them from the villa. But one night Macco had slipped away, apparently gone to seek his freedom in the countryside beyond the Emperor's laws. For Severus's part he seemed somehow jealous of Regina's relationship with Carta, which long predated his own attachment. Regina wasn't even sure what Severus's relationship with Carta was. They certainly weren't married. Regina thought he gave her some measure of protection, in return for companionship. It wasn't an uncommon arrangement.