Clash of Iron

by Angus Watson

  So every night the army slept in a little walled town, bigger than most towns that Ragnall had seen in Britain, Italy or Gaul. In its centre, the general’s tent would have a hundred feet cleared around it in every direction. Spread around the general’s digs, in razor-sharp regularity, were zones for each rank, culminating in large leather tents for the eight legionaries of each contubernium, all arranged in rectangles with broad roads between them. Around the camp but inside the wall was a clear, two-hundred-feet wide swathe, intended to ease defensive movements, give safe grazing land for horses and provide storage space for siege equipment, food stocks, slaves, captives and all the other supplies.

  At first, Ragnall had found the building of an identical new camp wherever they stopped to be a bewildering waste of time. Now that they were such a long way into potentially dangerous territory, he appreciated the mental and physical security that the camps provided. It was also a good way of keeping the soldiers busy when they finished marching. If they were digging and building, they couldn’t be fighting, gambling, having sex with each other or doing anything else dangerous or detrimental to morale. Moreover, ditch digging was good physical exercise. The standard ditch depth was one pace, tripling to three paces when an enemy was nearby. Men who dug these each time the army moved – every legionary in other words, often every night – would build muscle and be all the more able to hurl a pilum into charging ranks or thrust through ringmail with their sword.

  Following the camp-planning surveyors on the march were the pioneers and engineers, ready to nip to the front and clear fallen trees, build bridges, drain marshes and otherwise remove or overcome obstacles. Next came the general’s baggage and the general himself, on horseback of course, shielded by his praetorian guard. In Caesar’s case, these were men picked from his favourite legion, the tenth, some mounted, some on foot, clad in black versions of the standard legionary’s leather and metal garb.

  Behind the general came the rest of the cavalry, then the siege equipment – wheeled towers, catapults and the like, dismantled and loaded on horse- and ox-drawn carts – then the senior staff on horseback, then the remaining legions marching behind their eagle standards, followed by their baggage carried on around a thousand mules for each legion. At the end was a rearguard of more auxiliaries, spread like a trailing net to detect assaults from behind.

  The whole thing was huge, equivalent to a city wrenching free from its foundations and relocating every day. It should have been impossible, or at least a chaotic mess, but it worked because everyone knew their place. The Roman organisational genius thrilled Ragnall. There was a hive mentality that benefited everyone, within which individuals could shine. Could there be a better way to live?

  The rearguard was officially the end of the procession, but there was another, usually very large unofficial group: the hangers-on. Every Roman army was followed by a contingent of merchants, slave dealers, prostitutes and others who might profit from the needs, wants and plunder of soldiers, as well as those wives and children of legionaries who had no homes or means of supporting themselves away from their soldier husbands and fathers.

  Some of the richer merchants had guards, and the richest had squads of keen-eyed mercenaries and thick-browed thugs. Otherwise, this mass of stragglers was given no protection by the army, so they tended to huddle close into its lee, mingling with the auxiliary rearguard. When there was a serious danger of attack, and the hangers-on would have most benefited from the army’s protection, the army would drive them back and kill anyone who came within a few hundred paces. At these times the top merchants and prostitutes could usually buy or wheedle themselves a place in the convoy, but the lot of the camp straggler was not, for the majority, a happy one.

  This march was particularly fast, since Caesar claimed that Ariovistus and the Germans were also headed for Vesontio. In fact, scouts reported that the Ariovistus’ army was at least seven days’ travel away, and showed no sign of moving. Ragnall guessed that the dramatically fast march was for exactly that reason – drama. “He went how far? In how many days? With how many men?” the citizens of Rome would ask each other, rather than the more pertinent question of “why did he go there?”.

  On the evening they arrived at Vesontio, Ragnall wandered along with many others past the digging legionaries, away from the camp on the plateau to the south and into town. With Ariovistus so far away and as a reward for the swift march, Caesar had sanctioned an evening of revelry for those ranked decanus or above.

  Ragnall was alone in the crowd. He told himself he didn’t care, but he was in fact painfully aware that everyone else was in groups, or at least strolling along in chatting pairs. He did not have many Roman friends, only Caesar really, if he could be called a friend. He had never had the chance to fraternise with the soldiery, and the rest of the staff seemed reluctant to become close to him. He guessed that it was because of his links to Felix. People knew about his miraculous survival of the burial at Caesar’s party and suspected he’d been in league with the magician. It was probably that, he thought, mixed with the fact that the soldiers tended to flock in their prescribed groups, either military or ethnic. Since Ragnall wasn’t part of any military division and was the only Briton, he had no simple social bonds like the others did.

  He went to a tavern and failed to join in a few conversations, so left to have a look around. Vesontio was a strange place. It was like a Roman town occupied by the shabbiest of barbarians. What might have been pleasantly airy squares surrounded by stone buildings were crammed with a jumble of haphazard wooden shacks. Broad roads with proud houses either side were jammed with wooden shelters that looked like they’d been smashed to pieces and reassembled in a hurry. What might once have been a decent little park was reduced to a few hacked-up tree stumps. The whole place, the former park especially, stank of human excrement.

  Peering out from the dilapidated dwellings were sorrow-eyed, filthy, malnourished people. The town was crying out for Roman leadership. In Rome, the poor, one of whom Ragnall had once been, were all shunted to the Aventine Hill, which they could ruin as much as they liked (although it was still a lot smarter than Vesontio’s noisome shanty). The sort of human detritus that was so much in evidence in the centre of Vesontio was kept well away from the decent people of Rome. If they got their act together and made something of themselves, as Ragnall had, then they moved from the Aventine and left the shabbier people to their shabby ways. It was a fair, sensible system.

  The richer-looking people who lived in Vesontio, those few who hadn’t fled from the Romans, seemed to all be in or around the taverns, busy pleasing their visitors, flitting about obsequiously, filling Roman mugs with wine. Ragnall didn’t like it. He knew that the Britons wouldn’t give up so easily as these cowardly Gauls, and part of him was proud of that. He sort of wanted the Britons to put up a decent fight, but also he wanted them to capitulate like lambs before lions, so that Roman ways might come to Britain all the sooner and he’d have his revenge on Lowa. It was confusing.

  By the time Ragnall arrived in his third tavern, there had been a massive shift in mood among the Romans. The usual soldiers’ bawdy, competitive conversation, in which he who shouted loudest had the floor, had evaporated to leave a residue of subdued hubbub, as if everyone were sharing bad news.

  Ragnall tapped the shoulder of a passing Gaulish serving girl whose black hair shone in the torchlight. She turned, met his gaze and raised an enquiring eyebrow. He introduced himself, asked her name, and if she knew what everyone was talking about.

  “I’m Kapiana. They’re all talking about the Germans. It seems that somebody’s told them the truth. We were told not to,” she said. Her heart-shaped face was set in an attitude of unimpressed, even defiant matter-of-factness which surprised Ragnall, given what he’d decided about the Gauls while walking around Vesontio.

  “The truth?” Ragnall asked.

  “We were asked not to tell you,” she sighed and looked about herself, “but, since the secret’s out
, I don’t suppose there’s any harm. The Germans ruled by Hari the Fister are not people, not men and women like us. They are formoris, trolls and other such demons and beasts. It seems that they’ve been gathering for years in the German forests, growing stronger and more numerous. They’ve killed and eaten their way through all the villages in the woods and now they’re spreading west. They take on human form most of the time, but change into huge, twisted, fanged beasts before you can say Cromm Cruach.”

  “Nonsense,” said Ragnall. “Children’s stories.” He wasn’t convinced by his own words. If she’d been some wide-eyed dimwit he wouldn’t have believed her for a second, but this woman’s straightforward delivery made her tale sound plausible.

  “That is exactly what I said to begin with,” she said. “I wish I still thought that way.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “People disappearing, livestock mutilated. A field of sheep not far from the city wall became a field of wool, bones and blood overnight. I said it was bears or wolves, forced from the mountains by harsh weather. But I knew it wasn’t. I’d never heard of animals causing anywhere near that much damage, and the weather had been milder than usual. Then…” Kapiana shook her head and sucked in a long breath through gritted teeth.

  “What?”

  “About a moon ago, a thousand horses – maybe more – came galloping from the east, each one carrying the blood-dripping legs and lower torso of a rider. The riders’ upper halves were missing.”

  “Missing?”

  “The horses galloped to our wall, swerved west and disappeared, but we took some of them down with slings. We examined what was left of the riders. I’d seen similar wounds once before, on a rabbit that had been bitten in half by a dog. Someone suggested that they were fleeing when attacked by great winged beasts that swooped down, took their heads, arms and chests in their mouths and bit them in half. I can’t believe that. I don’t see why they wouldn’t have ducked or leapt off their horses, or been knocked off when the beasts attacked, or fallen off afterwards – at least some of them! But I can’t think of any other explanation. Can you tell me why the lower halves of a thousand people might come galloping from the east?”

  Ragnall took a swig of wine and looked hard into her eyes. She met his gaze.

  “Do you know who the riders were?” he asked.

  “I don’t. Plenty have guessed, but nobody knows. We know only that there’s something terrible in the woods.”

  “There must be another explanation,” he said.

  “My thoughts exactly. But have you ever stood on a hill and looked across the Renos? The German forests on the other side stretch for as far as you can see on the clearest day. Nobody knows what’s on the other side of the trees, or even if there is another side. Are we so arrogant to think that undiscovered creatures, even demons, cannot live in those endless woods because we never see them on the civilised fringes that we inhabit?”

  “Well…”

  “What I do know is that last year I would have laughed at me if I were you, so I respect your scepticism. But now I know differently.” She shivered, though the evening was warm. “You seem like a good man, so I implore you to believe me and save yourself. You’re not a Roman. Are you auxiliary cavalry?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Then leave now and go home. It’s the Romans’ fate to be eaten by monsters, not yours. Leave.”

  Kapiana walked away. A few heartbeats later, she was deep in conversation with a table of centurions.

  Chapter 8

  “They want WHAT?!”

  Ragnall and the other scribes all started at Caesar’s shout, then returned to writing, more quietly than before so that they might hear the reply. The scribes were hidden from Caesar and whoever he was shouting at by screens decorated with pictures of Aquae Sextiae, the battle some forty years before in which Caesar’s uncle Marius and his legionaries had killed a hundred thousand Germans.

  “They want to go home.” Ragnall recognised Labienus’ voice. “Five of the six legions are demanding immediate return to Roman territory. The twelfth would have gone already if the tenth hadn’t prevented them. There were fights. A couple of deaths. Several companies of the auxiliary cavalry galloped away at first light. Iberians, all of them.”

  “Thank Jupiter for the faithful tenth. Which legion guarded the camp overnight and stayed away from Vesontio?”

  “The tenth.”

  “I see. Do we know what happened in Vesontio yesterday evening?”

  “I do not, I have men finding out.”

  “Do that. Use the praetorians if you need. And gather the centurions—”

  “Sir…?” Ragnall poked his head around the screen.

  “Ragnall?” Caesar asked. Labienus looked surprised and then irritated that an advisor had interrupted the general. Ragnall reddened, but Caesar gestured for him to continue.

  “I know what happened in Vesontio.”

  Ragnall repeated the tales of monsters in the forests that had enthralled him and everyone else the night before.

  Caesar banged his fist on a map table. “Jupiter’s sandals! Roman officers taken in by barbarian fairy tales … there is more to this than we can see.” After his initial flash of anger, he sounded more fascinated than annoyed. “The officers must have been so deeply affected that they repeated the stories to the men on their return. Ragnall, who is this Gaulish orator who can deceive an entire army?”

  “There was no one orator. All the Gauls seemed to believe what they were saying. They were very convincing. And … is it not possible that creatures that we haven’t previously encountered live in those endless dark forests? Perhaps they have migrated recently from the unknown east, where for years they’ve been mustering—”

  Caesar held up his hand for silence. “Labienus, keep every man away from the town. In fact, pull them all back and lock down the camp. If any man steps outside the walls, his century will be decimated. Send Felix to me.”

  “What about foraging? We are short of firewood and—”

  Labienus saw the look on Caesar’s face, stopped talking, held up his palms, bowed, turned and walked briskly from the tent.

  Chapter 9

  “Morning, Atlas.” Chamanca smiled up at the tiptoeing Kushite. Dawn sliced dusty bright lances through the shutters of the three-bed room that Kapiana had allotted them, but Chamanca would have recognised Atlas’ heavy footsteps in total darkness, even over Carden’s snores. Both he and Carden were big men, but Carden had mastered the art of stealthy movement while Atlas had never come close.

  “Hmmph,” said Atlas. He placed his axe carefully on the floor, dropped his woollen cape and climbed on to his creaking wooden bed.

  “How was Kapiana?”

  Atlas rolled over, facing away from her. A few moments later he rolled back, grabbed his woollen cape from the floor and rolled over again, pulling it around him. Heartbeats later, he was snoring.

  Chamanca lay awake, listing to the men’s snores. She had never before slept in a town’s stone building and she didn’t like it. She’d stayed in huts with stone walls, but you could step out of those easily enough. Here, you had to go through at least three other stone-walled rooms before you were in fresh air and that was too removed from the real world for her. It was like being buried alive. The window didn’t help, high up as they were. It was like a display of unreachable food to a hungry man.

  She tried her best to drop off. The way to sleep with a snorer, she knew, is to align your breathing with theirs and pretend to yourself that it is your breath making the snoring sounds. That might have worked with one, regular snorer, but Carden and Atlas were grunting like a whole sounder of confused wild boar. She lay, looking at the black ceiling.She tried to fantasise about Kapiana and her slender neck, but for some reason her thoughts kept coming back to Atlas sleeping with the Gaul. For some reason, it annoyed her.

  She was woken a good while later by a hubbub outside. She sprang up silently and jinked open a s
hutter. They were a storey up, with a good view of the high street.

  A group of black-clad Roman soldiers was moving slowly through the town, questioning people. At their head was a figure she recognised – Felix. Even from behind, at fifty paces, he was unmistakeable. She gasped. What the Fenn? What was Zadar’s druid doing with the Romans in far-flung Gaul?

  As if feeling her gaze, he turned and looked up at the window. She ducked, then felt foolish. It was a bright day, the room was dark and she had the shutter open only a finger’s breadth. There was no way that he’d be able to see her. Slowly, she rose up and put her eye to the slit again. Felix was still looking straight at the shutter – at her, it seemed.

  Fenn! she thought to herself, crouching down. Had he seen her? Did he know it was her? Did it matter if he did? As far as Felix knew, she, Carden and Atlas were professional soldiers, whom he’d last seen …

  Who was she kidding? This was Felix. Chances were he’d seen her and read her mind. Chances were, if he was with the Romans now, that he knew all about them and their mission already. So what could they do?

  “What’s up, Chamanca?” asked Carden from his bed.

  “We may have a problem,” she said.

  The Iberian argued for leaving immediately. There were boats all along the city walls, so they could have been across the river and away to the Roman-free north in moments. Atlas said that their mission was to hamper and, if possible, stop the Roman army from reaching Britain, or at least gain information, so they had to stay in Wesont until they knew what the Romans would do next. There was no point sacrificing their entire mission because a flighty Iberian thought that one man might have seen her, when there was no way he could have done. Chamanca said that Atlas wanted to stay only to protect Kapiana, which was noble, but stupid, suicidal and of no help to Lowa and Britain. Felix had seen her, and they should go. Atlas said that this was nonsense, they should stay. After far too long arguing with the Kushite, Chamanca asked Carden to have the casting vote.