Flames blossomed in the darkness on the far side of the fields and the air hissed and roared with fire arrows that swooped down on the tiled roofs of the farm buildings. A horn note belled out through the trees.
‘That’s the sign for attack,’ said Flaminius grimly. She glanced at him, hearing the scrape as he drew his longsword from its sheath, but it was too dark to see his expression.
Yelling cries to split the heavens, riders burst out of the trees on either side, wild Caledonians on shaggy horses. ‘Move!’ came Segovesus’ voice from behind them. ‘What are you waiting for? We must attack!’
He shot past them on his horse. Flaminius spurred his own steed into action. Heart heavy, Drustica followed them both.
Riding figures thundered across the fields, churning the mud into a morass. Some bore flaming torches. Others brandished lances or longswords. At once they were leaping the hurdle gates of the farmyard.
Even as Drustica and Flaminius clattered across the cobbles of the courtyard, lit as it was by flames curling up from the burning roof of the main farmhouse, the doors burst open and out rushed several figures. Some were small enough to be children, others were adults, both women and men. At the head of the crowd was a big old fellow who brandished what looked like a legionary short sword.
Horses reared and screamed. A smaller figure, a youth—the man’s son? —ran up with a spear. As he tried to stab Flaminius’ horse, the tribune cut him down with his longsword.
Screaming and shouting rent the air as the raiders flung themselves upon the defenders.
Drustica found herself attacked by a farmhand who wielded a mattock. Hauling at her reins with her left hand, she spitted him with her sword. He fell like a poleaxed ox.
These farmers were no fighters, none except the big man. The raiders cut several down in the first few seconds, and now while some forced the remnant into retreat, others dismounted and took heads.
The farmhouse was a blazing furnace, and the defenders had no choice but to fight their attackers. The big man dragged one man from the back of his horse, braining him despite his helmet on the cobbles. Drustica was about to cut him down when Bellomarus rode past, followed by Caledonians herding a flock of frenziedly bleating sheep. All around them buildings were burning.
‘Ride!’ the auxiliary leader shouted. ‘We’ve got the heads. Ride!’
‘Come on!’ Segovesus cried. ‘We’re pulling back.’ He turned and galloped from the yard. Flaminius and the others followed him.
Drustica had yet to take a head. She looked about her for an opportunity; she could take one and then ride after the others.
The big man turned on his heel, longsword glittering in the starlight. The blade sliced at her horse’s hocks and it went down with a terrified whinny.
Drustica was flung free but her helmeted head smashed into a stone coping and her vision filled with exploding stars. Something dropped to the earth nearby and went rolling away. She tried to move but couldn’t summon up the will.
Flaminius rode grimly amidst the troopers, glancing back over his shoulder. The boy’s head hung from his saddlebow; he had sawed it off during the lull in the fighting. Grisly work.
He had not enjoyed the attack on the farmers. Though they hadn’t been entirely defenceless, their livestock had been stampeded, their crops trampled or burnt, their buildings destroyed. And all for what? Not that Romans were opposed to such hit and run attacks, but that was in time of war or rebellion. This attack—what had motivated it? All it was was a proving ground for him and his comrades, to show that they were indeed bagaudae. So they could be initiated into the secrets of the druids. So they would learn the rebels’ plans.
Unless Flaminius could find out what they planned and betray them, the entire province was doomed to uprising, war—perhaps it would even be detached from the empire and revert to the barbarism of the old days, the barbarism that persisted north of the Wall. If he could prevent that, it justified anything—even killing that youth, whose only crime had been defending his kith and kin from night raiders.
They rode on. When they halted in a remote valley in the hills, he went to look for Drustica to speak with her, but he couldn’t find her.
Drustica awoke to the drip of rain on her face and a smell of wood ash in her nostrils. She lay on her face on hard ground. The cold grey light of morning oozed over the stones as rain hissed down. She tried to roll over but realised that her arms were bound.
Panicking, she increased her efforts. A rough voice barked something derisive and she was picked up and sat against a half-burnt wall. The yard was filled with men. Bodies lay in coagulating pools of blood that even the heavy rain could not wash from the cobbles.
Standing over her was the big man. The farmer, she realised. Nearby clustered some of his farm workers while a stout woman clutched a little girl to her shapeless form. The other people in the yard wore armour. For a moment Drustica thought they were bagaudae. Then she saw they were legionaries, wearing thick woollen cloaks over their armour to keep out the rain and cold.
Her own armour was gone, and a pile of mail topped by a helmet lay nearby. A sword and shield lay propped against the wall. Her own clothes were in rags.
‘The Amazon has woken!’
The farmer struck her across the face. She endured it, and the following kicks and punches too, until the centurion in charge of the legionaries stepped up.
‘That’s enough,’ he said firmly. ‘She’ll be wanted for questioning. Alive.’
The farmer gave the centurion a salute that seemed incongruous in a civilian. ‘Very well, sir,’ he replied, ‘but when you’ve finished with her, bring her back. My people have a score to settle with her.’ His face puckered. ‘She killed my boy. Cut his head off. Where’s his head now? And other people were beheaded. Their heads have been taken…’
‘That wasn’t me.’
‘She speaks! What do you have to say for yourself, Amazon?’ the farmer said, glaring down at her.
‘I didn’t kill your son,’ Drustica said. ‘That was…’ She halted. ‘It was one of my comrades. Where are they?’
‘Rode off like cowards, taking the heads as trophies,’ said the centurion. ‘Who are you? Tiberius here says his attackers were Caledonians. Are you a Caledonian?’
‘I am a Roman citizen!’ When the centurion laughed, she realised how foolish it sounded. She added, ‘Of the Carvettian people.’
‘Carvetti?’ the centurion said. ‘They’re up round Luguvalium, by the Wall. Are you a renegade? Why were you riding with a Caledonian war party, and how did they get so far south?’
‘It’s confidential,’ Drustica insisted. ‘I have to speak with someone in authority.’
‘You talk pretty big for a raider,’ said the farmer resentfully. ‘You’ll say a lot more when I’ve finished with you.’ He picked up a stick from the ground and raised it above his head.
‘You’ve searched me.’ Drustica ignored him and addressed the centurion. ‘Did you not find a brooch?’
‘A brooch?’ said the centurion. ‘We found no whorish jewellery.’
Drustica’s breath came rapidly. She’d lost her lance-head brooch that marked her as a Commissary agent. It came back to her: the sound of something rolling away from her when she fell. How could she hope to get away now? These people would never believe that she wasn’t a raider. She doubted many of them would recognise the brooch, but the centurion should be aware of the Commissary, if he wanted promotion one day.
‘Search the yard,’ she commanded. ‘I lost it when I was flung from my horse.’
The centurion gripped his belt with two big hands and regarded her contemptuously. ‘Are you giving me orders?’ He looked at the vengeful farmer. ‘I’ll leave this insolent whore with you. I want her alive when I come back—I’m taking her back to headquarters for questioning—but she doesn’t have to be in one piece.’ He signalled to his men and they marched from the yard.
Face red with fury, the farmer brought the stick
cracking down on Drustica’s helpless form.
Dispirited by the rain, the raiders trotted across the moors. Flaminius rode hunched in on himself, soaked through and miserable to the core. They had lost several during the attack, two more troopers as well as Drustica. But only Drustica filled his thoughts. Drustica and remorse.
Desperately he tried to picture the hot sun, the blue skies, the sea at Baiae; an utter contrast to rain soaked reality. He should never have left Italy. When Junius Italicus had come to find him, he should have run and kept running. He swore to himself by all the infernal gods that if he survived he would tender his resignation to Probus as soon as he returned to Rome.
But now Junius Italicus had gone. Flaminius had been willing to sacrifice him if it meant becoming privy to the druids’ secrets, but in a way, he was glad his centurion had escaped, even if he had fallen to his doom.
He had been angry with the man for betraying him. That, and the days of training and indoctrination with the bagaudae—he hadn’t been in his right mind. But now Drustica was gone too.
‘Bellomarus chose badly when he picked that place,’ Segovesus confided in Flaminius. They had halted in a stand of trees. Rain hissed down beyond the dripping eaves.
Flaminius wondered why the man was talking to him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Looks like the farmer was an ex-legionary,’ Segovesus said. ‘The farm was better protected than we’d expected.’ He touched Flaminius’ arm. ‘I’m sorry about the decurion. I know you were sweet on her.’ Flaminius nodded wordlessly. He wanted to say something but he was all choked up inside. ‘She’ll be waiting for you on the far side of Phlegethon,’ he added.
Segovesus turned and walked away.
—26—
Phlegethon was a river in Hades. Everyone knew that. Everyone with a classical education, that was—but auxiliary troopers? Literary tradition and the flowerier sort of contemporary poetry would suggest that Drustica’s shade wandered the banks of that mythical fiery river. But somehow Flaminius didn’t reckon Segovesus was much of a scholar.
Phlegethon was also the password Probus had said his agent would use to make contact—if necessary. Flaminius had thought that Drustica was that agent. She certainly had been employed by the Commissary, but now he came to think of it, she’d never given him the password. In which case was she not the one Probus had meant? It made a lot more sense that the agent in question was already undercover as a member of the auxiliary troop.
Probus had never suggested Flaminius go undercover, that had been his own idea, a reaction to circumstances. No, in fact, it had been Drustica who had suggested it. Was Segovesus the agent in question? In which case, now that Flaminius was very much alone, now that both Junius Italicus and Drustica were dead, contact was very necessary indeed.
Flaminius hurried after Segovesus, but before he could find the trooper, the rain eased and Bellomarus issued the order for them all to remount. Flaminius found his horse and straddled it. He searched his comrades for Segovesus. There the Gaul was, mounting his horse on the far side of the little wood.
When all were mounted, they rode out of the valley and across another stretch of bleak, rolling moorland.
The sun shone down on the desolation, like an omen of better things to come. Flaminius kept his eye on Segovesus, but the trooper kept away from him, riding at the head when Flaminius was at the back, riding at the back when Flaminius was at the front. Soon Flaminius stopped trying to get close to him.
After all, what could they discuss out here, amongst so many enemies? Assuming Segovesus really was an agent. Maybe he’d been a private tutor for a rich family before he joined up. Maybe he’d been a clerk or librarian. Plenty of slaves worked in libraries. Perhaps he’d been emancipated and gone on to join an auxiliary troop.
No, that made no sense. A freed slave became a Roman citizen. Only officers were citizens in the auxiliaries, and not always then—the rest were peregrines, non-citizens from within the empire, or barbarians from beyond its limits. Segovesus was a Gaul, so a peregrine. What education he had had would have been rudimentary, if that. It was unlikely that he could write, let alone read or understand Greek.
They rode on across the moors and through the forests. As they galloped down towards the Kanovia valley, a patrol of legionaries was seen marching down the road. The auxiliaries took cover in the deep forest. There were too Romans for Bellomarus to chance an ambush by men tired and wounded. Besides, they didn’t want to attract too much attention yet, he explained. Attacking isolated farmsteads was one thing. If a Roman patrol went missing in the hills, more would be sent to investigate.
Flaminius wondered if any patrols had been sent to investigate his own disappearance. ‘But we are going to attack the Romans at some point?’ he said.
‘Of course we are,’ Bellomarus replied. ‘We’re going to raise the standard of revolt and force those bastards into the sea.’
‘When?’ Flaminius said. ‘How? We went through that’—he gestured to indicate the headhunting raid, and its attendant horrors— ‘so we could prove ourselves.’ He tried to forget the staring eyes of the boy he had killed, the severed head on his saddlebow now attracting flies. ‘Isn’t it about time you told us a bit more?’
Segovesus was behind Bellomarus. Very quietly the trooper caught his attention with his eyes, and shook his head warningly.
Bellomarus didn’t notice. He scowled at Flaminius. ‘You’ll learn everything, you’ll sit in on our war councils, all but the most secret—after your initiation. Yes, you’ve proved yourself, hill-man. Everyone saw you kill that boy. His head hangs from your saddle. You can’t get away from that. You’re in too deep; now you must fight for us. I’ll be promoting you to decurion. And now you can be initiated.’
Was that how they had turned Bellomarus? Did he have a blood guilt that the druids played upon? How long had all this been going on? Since the procurator’s murder? Or longer? Bellomarus was part of the same troop as Segovesus, but he was deep in the druids’ councils.
Flaminius sat back, disconsolate, haunted by guilt. He’d killed men before, but not boys, not untutored, unskilled farm boys. It had been necessary, of course. He had to convince the druids and bagaudae that he was one of them. But it was difficult to justify the murder of innocents. Only if he could save the province from druidic revolt could he ever justify what he had done. Even then, how could he get the information out without exposing himself?
His eyes met those of Segovesus again. The Gaul was expressionless. Flaminius was about to ask Bellomarus a question when a scout scrambled down to join them.
‘They’ve moved on,’ he reported.
Bellomarus rose, and gestured for the other troopers and the Caledonians to do the same. ‘We’ll wait half an hour longer,’ he said. He told the scout to keep watching, and added, ‘Then we will cross the valley and ride over the moors to the city.’
It began raining again as they entered the high hills. They were going a different way through the maze of peaks from previously, coming up from further south. Flaminius recognised nothing until they crossed a Roman road and he saw that it was the one from Kanovium to Segontium. But their hoofs clip-clopped on the stone surface only briefly, and then they were crossing the purple heather once more. A few more miles brought them into the hidden valley dominated by the city on the peak.
That evening there was feasting and drinking in the hall of skulls to welcome the freshly blooded warriors back to the fold. Niches were found in the stone walls where the new heads were laid to rest. The eyes of the boy he had killed seemed to follow Flaminius around the hall.
Cucullata joined them. From under her cowl she gazed admiringly at her freshly blooded new warriors. ‘Tonight you will be initiated into our mysteries,’ she breathed.
The troopers, led by Bellomarus, staggered from the hall packed with meat and full of drink, and were led up the winding path to the central of the three cairns on the hilltop. A wind howled in from the sea and the distant waves
foamed white in the cold light of the stars. As he left the hall, Flaminius felt the cold night air on his flushed face like a warning, an omen. This night he would descend into the Underworld.
He had not drunk as much as his fellow troopers, but he was still unsteady on his feet as he walked at their head, behind Bellomarus. The wind howled like a great wolf, and their long hair and capes whipped back and forth. Despite the wind, firelight blazed up ahead.
As they drew closer he saw two druids beside an opening in the cairn, holding torches that roared in the wind but showed no signs of being extinguished. They welcomed the men and indicated the entrance. Taking a torch from one of the druids, Bellomarus led the troopers within.
Out of the wind all was quiet except for the thudding echo of booted feet, but the air was stifling, cold and dank and stale. Flaminius began wondering if they were truly going to enter the Underworld—and meet Drustica on the banks of the Phlegethon? —when the passage opened out into a larger chamber, walled with stones. In the centre was what looked like a roughhewn stone altar.
Within stood Cucullata, holding a harp. At her side was another figure which wore an iron mask in the form of a stag’s head. It held a torch in one hand and a drinking goblet in the other. It spoke, and its voice was that of Orgetorix.
‘Welcome to the world of the dead. You are all dead men, but tonight you will learn that death is only the midpoint in life. All who die will return after a spell in the Otherworld. Death is not to be feared.’
And he took the harp from Cucullata, who took in return the torch and the goblet, and he strummed while he sang the tale of a long-ago hero. This hero was mortally wounded in battle with his enemies but three goddesses took him away in a coracle to a mysterious land in the West where his wounds were healed. He returned to the world only to find many generations had passed.
As the bard spoke, Cucullata passed around the assembled initiates, giving them sips from the goblet. Flaminius drank to find that it tasted strange, not very pleasant, and left him feeling as if all the blood had rushed to his head. As Orgetorix’s voice boomed on, his words seemed to take on a deeper significance. Visions surged into Flaminius’ mind, visions of tossing seas of leaves, wide forests where waterfalls thundered and deer cropped grass beneath the trees.
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