MECH

by Tim Marquitz

  His build was enormous, wide of girth and taut of sinew, yet possessing a lethal speed all who’d faced him only learned at the cost of their lives. Naked save for kidskin britches and the tattoo of a winged dragon across his chest, he rode the length of the beach at the head of a dozen oak-and-wicker chariots, their iron-rimmed wheels throwing up clods of blood-soaked sand. The horses snorted at the stench of butchered corpses piled at the water’s edge, but his grip on the trace was firm and they would not balk.

  He held a Roman helmet aloft by its horsehair plume so every man on the beach could see it. The legionary’s head was still within, held fast by the leather cheek guards and chin strap. Black droplets that fell from the severed neck coated his shoulder like warpaint.

  Branoc was Ordovice; a proud man of the west, a warrior born in the mountains who had been killing the Roman invaders since his tenth winter. Between the patchwork tribes, outlaws and refugees, around four thousand fighters stood on the beaches of Afallach.

  Count the painted women and you added half that again.

  “See!” he shouted. “Even their leaders are beardless boys!”

  They roared as Branoc hurled the head into the sea. He drew his sword and slammed the flat of the blade against his blood-boltered chest. The host of warriors followed his example, beating swords and axes on notched and splintered shields.

  They ran into the surf and hurled insults across the straits at the Roman camp, waving their cocks and pissing in water the legionaries would wade through on the morrow. Drunk on victory and barrels of beer brought by the shrieking earth-maidens, they would rage all night and fight like madmen all day.

  Feeling the eyes of another upon him, Branoc looked back to where the beach met the forest. There, standing at the edge of the ancient trees, was a figure silhouetted by the many fires burning at the heart of the island. Clad in long robes and bearing a long oaken staff, he surveyed the warriors on the beach like a seasoned war-maker.

  Branoc sheathed his sword and hauled on the trace, guiding the chariot up the beach until rings of pale boulders made the going impossible. He dropped from the chariot and clambered over the rocks to the grass.

  “Caerwyn,” said Branoc, kneeling before the druid.

  “Branoc, son of Pendaron, war-chief of the Ordovice,” said the robed man by way of greeting.

  Branoc stood, callused fingers tight on the grip of his sword. “War-chief? You do not name me king?”

  “Caratacos last bore that title and as a king he was hauled to Rome in chains,” said Caerwyn.

  “Caratacos was betrayed by the Brigante whore queen,” said Branoc. “That will not be my fate.”

  “No,” agreed the druid. “It will not.”

  The tone of the druid’s voice surprised him, freighted as it was with unasked-for knowledge, and Branoc bit back the question on his lips. Instead, he and Caerwyn watched the raucous clamor on the beach as naked and painted women passed through the baying warriors taunting the Romans.

  “A fine host of men you have arrayed,” said Caerwyn at last.

  “Not as mighty as your cewri,” said Branoc. “Will it rise with the dawn?”

  “Do not underestimate what you have done, lad,” said the druid, ignoring Branoc’s question. “Look at these warriors before us and tell me of the lands they call home.”

  Branoc shrugged. “They’re Ordovice and Deceangli mainly, with some Silures and Demetae from the south mixed in. A few Iceni renegades and Cornovii brigands as well.”

  Caerwyn nodded, tapping the end of his staff against Branoc’s red-matted chest. “Exactly. Tribes who would be foemen but for their shared hatred of Rome,” said Caerwyn. “Tribes who would fall to war with their brothers like the Caledones of the cold north, but who are now bound as kin.”

  “Aye,” spat Branoc, pointing over the water to the campfires of the Roman legions, spread far and wide across the mainland. “Bound as they were when the king last united the tribes, but they will all die for me as those men did for Caratacos at Caer Caradoc if your cewri does not fight with us.”

  “It is for the land to choose if the cewri walks,” said the druid, turning to follow a well-worn path into the oak forest.

  Branoc gripped Caerwyn’s arm and said, “We fought like Mak Morn himself that day and still it was not enough. Had you and your brothers stood with us at Caer Caradoc, we would have crushed Publius Scapula’s legions and marched on Londinium!”

  Branoc released the druid’s arm, mindful that his fate and that of his warriors rested with his order.

  “That is truer than you know, Branoc, son of Pendaron,” said Caerwyn, his eyes dark as pitch in the moonlight, and his voice sounding as though it came from somewhere impossibly deep and unbearably dark within him. “Follow me.”

  The druid walked deeper into the forest, circling still pools of dark water and threading a path through tall stones carved with looping spirals and angular runes. Branoc followed him, feeling his skin crawl as he looked into the pools and saw naught but darkness.

  “The bones of Maerlyan himself lie entombed on this island,” said Caerwyn, tapping his staff on the mossy ground. The sound echoed like a booming heartbeat in an abandoned hearth-hall.

  “And the spring that nourishes all life on these isles has its source here. Though they know it not, the Romans will bury it under roads of stone and the land will wither beneath them for centuries to come.”

  “Then the land must rise now to fight with us!”

  “I would wish for a host of cewri to awaken and crush Rome itself,” said Caerwyn, “but such powers as slumber beneath the earth give not a crow’s fart for the wishes of men.”

  The druid paused at the end of the path where a pair of tall stones had fallen together to form a triangular archway. Through the opening, Branoc saw flames painting the sky orange from the other side of a forested ridge. Drums and skirling war-horns echoed from beyond the trees, beguiling and fearful at the same time.

  He heard women; singing and laughing, calling his name. His heart beat faster and his cock hardened at the sound.

  “What lies yonder?” said Branoc.

  “Your last night as a mortal,” said Caerwyn.

  Dawn came upon the Roman camp with shouted orders and trumpet blasts. Fires were coaxed back to life, food distributed among the ranks of armed men, and waterskins filled. The sky was barely light, yet preparations for the assault on Mona Insulis were well under way.

  The contubernia were forming up in ranks under the watchful gaze of the optios and centurions. Three thousand armoured infantry and three hundred cavalry, all trained and disciplined to be the greatest warriors the world had ever known.

  The Ordovice likely outnumbered them, but had little in the way of armor, next to no training, and relied on wild ferocity over battle-drill. On an open field, just two legions would have been monstrous overkill, but here, with a sea crossing to make, a beach to climb, and the enemy occupying the higher ground, the outcome was far from certain.

  The cavalry led their horses through the gaps between the ranked-up infantry to the shallowest portion of the strait. The horses would swim the channel with their riders clinging to their manes. Beside the scores of horses, the infantry was already clambering into flat-bottomed boats at the water’s edge. The fast current made keeping the boats steady a difficult task, but taut ropes and stout backs were the equal of the task.

  Octavius reckoned on at least an hour before they were called to board. He forced himself to breathe and let the familiar sounds of a Roman army at war wash over him; prayers to Jupiter, and the invoking of the Mithraic mysteries, sounds of wood on wood from the onagers and ballista on the ridge behind them. Clanking metal, whinnying horses, and whetstones on steel. Ranking orders from the Centurions and legates, belching and farting as men made sure to clear their lungs and empty their bowels. The thought of being wounded was bad enough without the prospect of lying in your own shit till battle’s end.

  Octavius looked over his
shoulder and kissed the iron wolf of Mars around his neck, hoping for any news of Ordo Talos or a sign the gods favored them. He saw nothing, but this far from Rome, the gods helped those who helped themselves.

  He sent his gaze across the water, praying he would not see the towering outline of the demon again. Smoke hung low over the island’s craggy silhouette, the great bonfire at its heart now burned to ashes.

  “Do you see it?” asked Quintus, guessing what he sought.

  “No,” he replied.

  “Maybe it’s dead,” said Lucius.

  “Maybe it’s just waiting for us,” said Tiberius.

  “Still your tongue from fear-mongering,” snapped Cato at the head of their contubernium. “Waste no breath fearing what might be. If you must fear something, fear me. Decimation may be a relic of the past but, by Jupiter, I’ll bring it back long enough to slay any man who turns from this fight.”

  That silenced them, and Octavius returned to studying the island. The beaches were deserted save for smouldering campfires and sprawled tribal warriors lying in drunken stupors. Its very emptiness was unnerving, as though the Ordovice had somehow vanished in the night.

  “Perhaps they’re stupefied with drink,” suggested Quintus.

  “Don’t count on it,” said Octavius with a nod to Cato, who knew the time had come to leaven his earlier threat.

  “Octavius has the truth of it,” said the decanus. “Remember the Brigantes of Eboracum?”

  Octavius took that as his cue and laughed. “Fuck me, the feast of Queen Cartimandua. How could we forget?”

  “She had Caratacus in chains and made the poor bastard drink flagon after flagon of that watery piss they call beer.”

  “How many was it he ended up drinking?” asked Lucius.

  “Bacchus himself lost count,” said Tiberius, “but he was still sober by the time he was carted off to Rome.”

  “There’s no wine as strong as hate,” said Quintus.

  “True, lad,” said Cato. “The Brigantes drank themselves blind that night. And the next morning, while we nursed heads that felt like Vulcan himself was pounding on our skulls with his forge-hammer, they were out hunting.”

  The memory was a good one, and the tension eased.

  Octavius rolled his shoulders to loosen the muscles and wished he’d had another piss before forming ranks. He didn’t need to piss, but the prospect of battle was making the muscles around his bladder tighten.

  It wasn’t fear, just a healthy respect for the courage and fury of the enemy warriors. He’d fought enough of them in the conquest of Britannia to know they were hard, wolf-lean men with fire in their bellies.

  As if summoned by the thought, the forest at the summit of the beach shivered with the passage of many men beneath its boughs. They heard the Ordovice first, a wild skirling of carnyx horns and bestial howling from thousands of barbarian throats. A rhythmic thunder of sandaled footsteps, swords on wooden shields, hurled insults and guttural cries to savage gods.

  Strange figures in white emerged from the edge of the trees, men with wooden staffs and crowns of leaves. Murmurs of fear passed through the ranks at the sight of the tribal priests, murmurs that were swiftly silenced by the clubbing fists of the optios and tribunes.

  “Druids,” said Octavius, clenching his fist around the iron wolf at his neck.

  “But no demon,” said Cato as the Ordovice finally appeared.

  They streamed from the trees in their thousands, an unruly host of near-naked tribesmen in an assortment of cloaks, britches, and leather jerkins. Only a very few wore any armor, a mixture of ragged mail shirts and boiled leather breastplates. The rest were smeared in pale chalk and gaudy dyes, wearing their long hair in resin-stiffened spikes.

  Chariots appeared at the flanks of the maddened host, racing up and down the beach as their crews waved spears and bows above their heads.

  They bellowed for Roman blood, and the army quailed before such ancient, primal savagery. Like something conjured from a nightmare, the Ordovice resembled nothing so much as the legendary cannibal tribes of the unknown east.

  “Gods,” said Quintus. “We fight a host of lunatics.”

  A ripple of unease spread through the legions, but the enemy warriors were not the worst of it.

  Hundreds of naked, shrieking, blood-painted women cavorted through the tribal army. Bearing torches to burn cowardice and warm their men to the heat of battle, they laughed like the harpies of Hades, screaming venom across the water.

  They waved curved sickles and mimed the act of castration, and not a single man of Rome didn’t blanch at the thought of their knives sawing at his balls.

  Octavius felt the muscles around his bladder contract again.

  A kernel of fear had lodged in the hearts of the legions, one that could tear the heart from this army before a single blow was struck.

  A defiant blast of brass cornu broke the spell of the howling women. Octavius drew in a breath of cold air as two horsemen with the sculpted regal features of patricians rode through the surf to the front of the Roman army.

  General Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, dark of hair, cold of eye, and unflinching in his dedication to Rome, was mounted on a pale steed. Clad in polished strips of segmented armor and a kilt of gold-embossed leather, the vivid crimson of his sagum cloak streamed in the wind, bright as fresh-spilled blood.

  Tribune Agricola rode alongside the general, younger and leaner, but with perhaps an even greater thirst for glory. His lineage was of singular virtue, but he had fought alongside the legionaries and earned their respect.

  Behind the two officers marched steel-clad warriors armed with fearsome, wide-bladed axes and bearing heavy shields. In their midst were the aquilifers with the eagle-topped banners of the XIV Gemina and the XX Valeria Victrix Legions held high.

  Octavius stood taller at the sight of the legion standards as Paulinus began to speak.

  “A day of blood and glory awaits,” said the general.

  Paulinus too had shed blood with them. Octavius had seen him wade through the red surf with sword bared. The general had cut his way onto the beach and reaped a bloody tally among the near-naked tribesmen before the druids’ demon had hurled them back to the mainland.

  The general was exhausted, but took pains not to show it.

  Paulinus nodded with them. “Yesterday was a day all of us will carry with us into eternity, but bear no shame for its grim ending. Who among us could have foreseen the depths to which the savages would stoop? What could have prepared us for the raising of such a demon? Mars himself would have quailed before such a terror.”

  “Told you,” whispered Tiberius.

  “And that is why this day must end with the eagle of Rome planted in the soil of Mona Insulis. It must end with every man, woman, and child on that island dead.”

  “We will see it done,” yelled Cato, and the legions cheered.

  “I count upon you all,” said Paulinus with a force of belief that made Octavius want to cross the water right now and put the Ordovice to the sword.

  “These druids are necromancers, murderers, and corpse-whisperers,” said Paulinus, fixing each legion warrior in turn with his uncompromising gaze. “They cut the throats of infants and drink their blood. They foster unrest among the tribes of Britannia, whispering revolt in the ears of once-loyal chieftains, and rouse the people of this land to acts of unspeakable savagery against their rightful masters. Tell me, brothers, would you see Roman rule so openly slighted?”

  “We would not. Their heads will be on spikes by sunset!” shouted Tiberius. “Jupiter’s oath, they will.”

  “Your courage gives me heart, my sons.” Paulinus grinned. “We are soldiers of the XIV Gemina, conquerors of Hispania, Gaul, and Germania, but this day will require all your heroic virtues; the strength of Horatio at the Bridge and the wisdom of the Divine Julius. We face men who sup blood like wine and whose meat is torn from the bones of their foes.”

  Paulinus drew his gladius and lifted it hig
h so that the dawn’s light caught its glittering edge. “This island on the very edge of civilization is their last stronghold, their last refuge from the rule of Roman law! If we falter, the poison of treachery and unrest will endure, it will spread and gain strength. And the ages yet to come will curse our name for what we let slip through our fingers!”

  The general turned his horse towards the jeering host across the strait, letting them feel his hatred for the savage foe.

  “Fight well and we will rewrite history,” he said. “Let there be such a feast of blades that the ocean runs red with the savages’ blood. Let it wash away all memory of loss, such that men will never again speak of it!”

  The legions bellowed in response, and Octavius roared himself hoarse like a new recruit in his eagerness to serve the general.

  “I can count on you all?” cried Paulinus.

  “Aye!” returned the men.

  Octavius clung to the thwart occupied by the forward rowers. His stomach heaved with the rolling motion of the boat as it crashed through the waves. Sea water splashed his face, and he tasted salt water. He spat over the gunwales. Too much blood and too many bloated corpses fouled the water for him to risk swallowing.

  An arrow splintered the wood of his shield, an oaken shaft with a bronze head. The bodkin quivered an inch from his eye. He snapped the point from the shaft and tossed it overboard.

  Hundreds of Roman boats surged through the choppy waters of the straits, straining rowers heaving the legionaries towards battle. At least a dozen had capsized, the warriors they carried drowning as their armor dragged them under the water.

  Squadrons of horses swam beside them, limbs thrashing, eyes wide in fear. Overturned boats spun dangerously in the treacherous current, smashing into other boats or the accompanying cavalry.

  Screams filled the air, the mad, martial music of war.

  Octavius saw a raven-fletched arrow punch through a cavalryman’s wrist, pinning him to his mount. The water churned red as something burst within the horse and it sank beneath the surface, dragging its howling rider with it.