by Jack Whyte
"Mediobogdum. I can, but not much more than I'm sure Connor has already told you. It's in the mountains, about ten miles from here, abandoned for at least two hundred years, but habitable yet, after some hard work, according to Derek. We're going to look at it, once Liam's fleet has been driven off. You'll see it for yourself then, at the same time I do."
"Some hard work, after two hundred years?" Donuil rose to his feet. "I'd better get back. We have all the stores and crates off-loaded, and the horses, and we're moving them inside the fort. We'll be done within the hour, I expect. I'll find out before then whether any boat set sail after noon yesterday, and if any did, I'll find out who was in it. I'll also find out if anyone, in a yellow tunic or otherwise, was asking questions about you and yours of our men yesterday. What are you going to do now?"
"I'm going up to look at the catapults on the walls, to see if we can use them without killing our own people in the process. Derek says they work well, but they've been there without skilled maintenance—as far as I'm aware— for almost thirty years, and I'll be happier once I've verified their condition for myself. I'll be very surprised not to have to change all the ropes, and I'll be even more surprised if I can find enough people capable of doing it in the time we have."
Shelagh returned to our temporary quarters to oversee the disposition of the goods arriving from the wharf, and I walked back to the wharf gates with Donuil, leaving him there and making my way up to the parapet walk.
I found Derek on one of the defensive towers that projected out towards the harbour, examining one of the great, fixed ballistae left behind by the legions when they abandoned the place. The long timber throwing arm stretched vertically, high above him as he crouched at its base, and I approached slowly, my eyes more concerned with the weapon than with the king. The great ropes that bound and propelled the device's moving parts looked sound, their surfaces hard and tight-looking, betraying no signs of the dry, weather-worn fuzziness I had feared to see. Derek heard me coming and looked up.
"Ah, there you are. I was looking for you earlier."
I explained what I had been doing, all the while examining the great torsion-driven throwing device on its solid base. "This thing looks excellent," I said, when I had finished. "It looks as though it could really work." As I said the words, another man straightened up from behind the other side of the machine's base, looking at me as though wondering which pit of Hades I had sprung from and what I could possibly know of artillery.
"Hah!" Derek's laugh was a bark of delight. "You hear that, Longinus? Merlyn of Camulod thinks your ballista might really work."
Longinus had drawn himself to his full height, and now he moved around the base of the machine to where I stood, pulling a tiny splinter from the side of one callused finger as he came. When it was out, he held it up to his eyes and then flicked it away before acknowledging me. He looked me up and down, his eyes moving very slowly, then nodded. "Gaius Longinus," he said. "You know siege machines?"
I shrugged. "I know enough to know this one's been well tended."
He nodded. "They all have."
I looked about me. I could see other installations on the walls, but this seemed to be the only one that was complete. "You have others?" I asked.
"Aye, dismantled. They'll be back in place today."
"How many have you?"
"Five." Longinus was evidently a man of few words.
"All on this wall?" I had seen signs of five installations.
He nodded. "Two overheads like this, three catapults."
"All in working order?" He nodded again. "Windlasses, too?"
Now his eyebrows flicked in annoyance. "You ever see a catapult that would work with a broken windlass?"
"Of course not. Forgive me, I'm simply excited. I didn't expect to find someone here with experience in the use and care of war machines. Where did you learn?"
"Right here."
"How, exactly? Or perhaps I should ask who taught you? The legions have been gone for thirty years and more."
"My father taught me, when I was a boy."
"And how did he know about it?"
"From the army artificers. Then, after the garrison left, he took over the defences for the king. Trained me. I've been doing it since he died, twenty years ago."
"Your father was with the legions?"
"Twentieth Valeria. Thirty years."
"In artillery?"
'The last twenty on artillery."
"My grandfather commanded the Valeria."
"Did he, by God? What name?"
"Britannicus, but that was more than forty years ago, probably before your father's time:"
"No, he was serving them But I don't know the name. Before my time."
I glanced at Derek. He was grinning like a split turnip. I ignored him and spoke again to Longinus, resigned now to this business of specific questions provoking taciturn answers. "You have assistants trained?"
"Two crews for each, one in training."
This was like catching fish by hand without bait. "You mean one crew? Or five crews in training?"
"Five. Six men to a crew."
"I see, so how many men altogether?"
He blinked, computing quickly. "Four and a half score. Ninety."
"Good God! Who trains them?"
"I do."
"All of them? You have no one to help you?"
"Five. Head man on each first crew." He looked away, down into the fort beneath the wall, and I heard someone shouting up to him. Then, without another word, he strode away towards the steps and disappeared down them.
I turned back to Derek. "He's not too talkative, is he?"
"No, but I'd choose him over any other man I know, either for company or competence. Wait till you see his people in action tomorrow. You'll be impressed, I promise you. So will the Ersemen, both on shore and afloat. They've all forgotten the Romans and their heavy catapults. When they see how much damage one well-used machine like this can do, and from how far away it can destroy a ship, they'll spin about like tops and they won't stop rowing till they run their keels up onto their own beaches ... " He paused. "The dead men. You still want them hung from the walls?"
"Absolutely, every one of them. I promise you, the sight of them in their armour—with Liam and his chieftains in the middle—will be even more effective than your catapults."
"Aye, it might, but it seems gruesome. There's more than a hundred of them."
"Close to a hundred and fifty. I agree with you, but Connor knows what he is doing. To these Ersemen, that much death, so flagrantly displayed, will scream of punishment and consequences not to be ignored. If we beat them off, in addition, they'll think long and hard before they come back this way again."
Derek deliberated in silence for no more than a few moments before nodding his head in agreement.
"So be it. I'll start Blundyl on the arrangements now. He'll need at least a hundred men, I'd guess. Those chains are heavy. They can start bringing them in immediately and fastening the lengths together. They'll string them as soon as Longinus and his people are finished setting up their machines. The bodies can be hung tonight, after the sun goes down." He hesitated, looking along the parapet from right to left. "I'm glad I won't have to do any of the hanging, it's going to be an unpleasant whoreson of a task."
"The hanging" was, as Derek had predicted, a whoreson of a task, but every able-bodied man in the settlement took part in it and it was completed before midnight, by the light of multiple bonfires kindled on the tops of the walls, in the enclosure beneath and on the earthen wharf outside the gates. Stringing the lengths of chain from the battlements had been the most time-consuming part of the exercise. The chains were heavy and cumbersome and had to be joined, then strung in long, pendant scallops anchored by shorter pieces—each about the length of a tall man— secured to the top of the wall above, so that the chain formed a kind of frieze running the entire length of the western wall facing the sea.
By the time that had
been done, arrangements were in hand to display the corpses effectively—a grisly enterprise made even less pleasant by the fact that the bodies had now been dead for more than a day and had begun to decompose. They hung in pairs, each pair slung by a loop of rope secured beneath the shoulders of the two corpses and then draped across the chain by men who also worked in pairs, suspended in seafarers' rope cradles from the walls above. The sole exception to the paired arrangement was the body of Liam Condranson himself, which hung in the centre of the wall by a single rope depending from the walkway above. He hung below the chain, as did his dead companions, but he was not attached to it in any way.
When the array of death was spread out in all its stark and gruesome panoply in preparation for the coming of the dawn and Liam's fleet, I passed the word among my own party to assemble in the central hall beneath Derek's thatch. I had several things to say to them before they went to sleep that night, for I had decided I owed them the right to think about my intentions overnight before committing any of them to the course of action I envisaged. By the time I arrived at the appointed gathering place, having had to stop and talk to Derek and Longinus about some last- moment arrangements, they were all waiting for me, sitting informally on a scattering of seats, benches and table tops, and all appeared to be as weary as I felt.
"I won't keep you long," I began. "Dawn will come quickly and none of us knows what it will bring us." I looked around at their faces, all watching me intently, none showing anything other than curiosity. I moved closer, positioning myself among them where all could hear without my having to raise my voice.
"We came to Ravenglass seeking sanctuary, a safe place to raise the boy. You all know that. What some of you do not know is that Derek, the king, refused our request shortly after we arrived. Fundamentally, what he said was that our continuing presence here—he meant mine, personally, and young Arthur's—would constitute a threat to the safety and welfare of his own people, since we represent a future threat to powerful factions in several places."
I stopped, expecting a reaction of some kind, but no one spoke. They seemed to sense that I had more to say.
"That, however, was yesterday. Since then, thanks to Liam and the Sons of Condran, everything has changed. Now Derek has a war on his hands. He sees us now—our continuing presence here, I mean—as. a guarantee of support from Athol and his fleets in the protection of the king's grandson. He wants us to remain now, and I believe we should, providing we can negotiate the terms of our staying to suit our own needs."
Dedalus spoke up. "And what are those? Have you defined them?"
"Aye, I believe I have, but only in the past few hours." I looked around at my listeners. "We chose this place at the outset because it offers us all that we need: safety from surprise attack, with mountains all around us and at our bade; open channels of communication with Athol and his Scots; and a degree of distance between ourselves and the dangers in Cornwall and Cambria."
I paused again, waiting for Dedalus.
"You sound unconvinced, now."
I nodded. "I am unconvinced, even with those safeties I've just mentioned. We had all of those, apart from the mountains directly at our back, in Camulod, our own home, and yet the risks were too great to remain there. Even an enclosed community like Camulod can be infiltrated, as we discovered to our cost. We could not identify our enemies even there, among our own, could not tell who might have been suborned. Now we are here in Ravenglass, an open port, and we are strangers here. The dangers are commensurably greater and therefore unacceptable ... "
"So you are saying we should move on?"
"I don't think so, Ded, but I don't know."
Dedalus raised his eyebrows and looked around at the others before his gaze came back to me. He coughed, clearing his throat. "You don't know ... Hmm. I, for one, would far rather have heard a blunt 'yes' or a loud 'no' there." He shook his head, thinking that over. The others remained absolutely still, no one as much as fidgeting, all eyes fixed either on me or on Dedalus. Finally Ded spoke again. "Look here, Merlyn, don't misunderstand what I say here ... I mean, you're more than entitled to have doubts from time to time, although we're not used to you being indecisive. We're accustomed to firm guidance from you—mostly in the form of direct orders—in anything important."
He looked about him again, as though seeking support from his fellows. If that was his intent, he gained nothing by it. Donuil coughed slightly, and apart from that there was utter stillness. He turned back to me. "We're all here because you're here and young Arthur's here. Wherever you two go, we go along. You're the leader, the commander. Tell us what to do and it's done. I don't think I can be plainer than that. Does anyone here think otherwise? Lucanus?" Lucanus merely shook his head, his eyes on mine, and it was apparent that no one else had anything to add. I smiled, grateful once more for Ded's plain, outspoken bluntness.
"I'm hesitant, Ded, that's all, not indecisive. There is another option open to us. I've had no time to look at it, or even to think much about it, but it has many disadvantages attached to it. It also has advantages that could work strongly in our favour. But opting for it would leave us open to a vast amount of work, perhaps more than we might realistically be willing or able to accomplish, and I have decided I will not make that decision without first looking at the reality carefully, or without seeking and receiving opinions from all of you. Your lives will be affected drastically, radically, in ways I suspect you could not begin to imagine, should we adopt this course."
Rufio twitched one hand, a signal he wished to speak. I looked at him invitingly and he grinned. "Worse upheavals than moving to Eire or these northern islands?"
I nodded. "Aye, perhaps much worse."
"How, in the name of God?"
"There is another Roman fort, several miles from here, inland. No one lives there."
Dedalus leaned forward, frowning. "It's in ruins?"
"Apparently not, from what I've been told."
'Then why is it lying empty?"
"It's high up, in the mountains, on a plateau. Who would want to live there when they can live here, by the sea, close to other people, close to the farms?"
"How many miles from here to there?"
"Twelve, perhaps fifteen, I don't really know. It's halfway between here and the main fort at Galava on the other side of the mountains, built to defend the road across the pass."
Ded's eyes lit up. "Then let's go! At least we can look at it, and probably make it habitable. How long has it lain empty, twenty years?" I shook my head. "Forty, then? The Romans have been gone about that long. It's a long time, but the place should be salvageable."
"Two hundred."
"What?"
"Two hundred years. Something like that. It's been empty for a long time."
'Two hundred years?" I laughed aloud at the outraged disbelief in his voice, although the truth of my statement was in fact quite sobering. He watched me as I straightened my face, and when he was sure I would not laugh again, he said, "You are quite serious, aren't you?"
I nodded, shrugging my shoulders at the same time. "Yes, I am. Apparently two hundred years up here is not the same as two hundred years elsewhere. Not according to what I have heard from Derek, at least." I noticed that Lucanus and Hector were both frowning and others were shaking their heads. "No, think about it," I insisted. 'The fort is built of local stone, and the roofs, on the granaries at least, are domed concrete. The barracks have cement floors, too, and were built of stout logs. Those may be weakened, perhaps rotted, but Derek tells me they still stand. The difference, my friends, lies in their isolation. Everywhere else we know, people tear down old buildings and use the materials to build new ones. But there are no people up there. The only damage has been caused by weather, which has little real effect on stone and concrete. The logs can be replaced. Derek tells me the forest grows right up to the walls of the place now, on the western side. It was cleared, originally, to build the fort, cut back for hundreds of paces to supply fuel for
the bathhouse, but it's grown back now. The amazing truth seems to be that the place may be as salvageable now, after two hundred years, as Ded assumed it would be after forty. We will only know once we have looked and seen for ourselves."
There was a lengthy silence, and then- Connor raised his hand. "I know I'm not involved in this directly, but you spoke of hardships and difficulties you might be incapable of overcoming. If it's the amount of work to be done that concerns you, well, you have a group of people here, it seems to me, who might find nothing insuperable in the task. You have smiths, I know, and soldiers, stonemasons and carpenters. You'll need labourers, too—muscles to do the donkey work—but I suppose you'll be able to enlist help from your neighbours here."
"Aye, but would we want to?" This was Hector. "You heard what Merlyn said. We had to leave Camulod because we didn't know whom we could trust among our own. Now we know we can trust ourselves alone—no one else. This new fort offers us a chance to keep our numbers few and trustworthy."
"That's nonsense, Hector." Connor's dismissal was immediate. "I suggested help, not immigration. There's nothing to stop you hiring people from the town to help you complete whatever you undertake. Equally, there's nothing that says you must permit them to remain up there once the work's been done. They've already shown they don't want to live there—nothing up there for them. Build yourselves a place to live in comfort and security, then people it and guard it by yourselves," He grinned. "Even Rome must have been far from anywhere before the first people settled there. Do you want my advice, Merlyn?"
"Of course."
"Let's see how the battle goes in the morning, and if we're all alive after it's over, let's meet again tomorrow.
That will give everyone a day to think about what lies ahead. Then some of you can ride out the following day and look at this fort."
"That makes sense. Does anyone have an objection?" No one did, and Donuil spoke up for the first time.
"Does this fort have a name, Commander?"
"Aye, it does. Mediobogdum."
He pursed his lips and nodded. '"In the bend of the river.' Well, at least that means there must be water there."