‘Who chose this dangerous path?’ grumbled Vitalis, though his expression made it clear with whom he lay the blame.
‘It is the trail to Twin Rivers from the south,’ Brigius shrugged as nonchalantly as he could manage. ‘We came through it on the way north, after all.’
A grunt was his only reply. The horsemen were now strung out in a huge column of single-file riders. Brigius could feel the tension rising just as he had on the moor before the battle. Any moment now…
The springing of the trap was announced by a cry ahead. Brigius couldn’t see what was happening, for an entire unit of praetorians, and the prince, lay between he and them, but the screams of men and horses filled the air, and he could see the shapes of both species tumbling from the trail, down the steep defile and to the rocks and the stream below.
Chaos suddenly erupted all along the narrow track.
Brigius felt a moment of panic and bit down, forcing it away. Hopefully the figures above had noticed Caracalla back at the battlefield, or at least deduced his presence from the tell-tale sign of the praetorians’ scorpion-emblazoned shields, and knew to avoid him. If the prince were injured or killed, or even perhaps his guards, then this exercise in slicing out the rotten flesh would have been entirely wasted, and the imperial family would burn the north clear of all life in retribution.
‘Protect the prince,’ Brigius shouted in Latin, and then, just to hammer home the point to the ambushers, he repeated the urgent cry in his native dialect.
The rear-guard had come under attack too, now. Men and horses were tumbling from the trail down the slope, breaking limbs and heads, smashed to pieces before they slumped into the stream at the bottom and partially dammed the torrent, the water running on in narrow channels with a pink tinge. Even animals untouched were throwing themselves wildly from the path in blind panic at the unseen source of missiles, some carrying their riders with them.
The second strike at the rear, he saw. Ropes that crossed the trail and were coiled in the undergrowth, disguised beneath thick brown dust and scree, were hauled tight, the loops catching round the fetlocks of numerous horses and pulling them from their feet, sending both them and their riders caroming down the deadly slope.
He wondered what the prince was thinking. The sour young nobleman must be somewhat confused, since the ambush had been sprung to both front and rear, and yet he, with his praetorians, sat in the middle untouched and unharmed. The bodyguard unit clustered as close as they could to Caracalla, though there would be little they could do if a similar tactic were used there. Yet they remained seated, tense and untouched as Numidians cursed in their strange southern accent and fell from the trail, bellowing until a stray stone caught their skull and robbed them of either wit or life.
Then, as the last coil was pulled, the barrage of rocks began. This was no military operation, clearly, and no arrows or spears lanced out. Rocks and chunks of branches, even clods of earth were hurled down from above, smashing into the riders and sending them off the path.
It was a massacre. A rout. The entire ambush had thus far lasted ten heartbeats and already most of the Numidians were gone.
Vitalis was yelling angrily, and his men were throwing themselves from their horses to land on the upper side of the path, clinging to the stubby grass as their horses were pounded and disappeared over the edge, whinnying their terror. Brigius was trying to estimate how many were left when Prefect Vitalis turned on him.
‘You! This was you. I saw you on the battlefield. Those men knew you. You wear the tunic of a Roman but you are one of them. You always will be. You did all of this.’
Brigius’ eyes swivelled to the praetorians and the prince they protected. None of them were paying any attention to him, their eyes variously on each other or on the hillside above from which stones rained.
It was fascinating how Vitalis had managed to stay mounted and safe through the hail of rocks, and the man stepped his horse forward menacingly, his hand dropping to the hilt of his spatha. ‘I will send you to meet your barbarian gods for what you’ve done to my men.’
Brigius felt a lump rise in his throat. Vitalis was dangerous – of that he had no doubt. For the briefest of moments he thought the gods were with him, as a clod of earth suddenly struck the prefect and he danced to his right, his horse’s hooves scrabbling on the edge of the trail. Then the gods laughed as another rock smashed into Brigius’ horse and he too went over the edge.
It was luck, and luck alone, that saved him from a deadly fall. Brigius happened to be above the stump of an old fallen tree, and while his horse tumbled to its death, he came free from the saddle and thudded into the wooden obstacle with a painful smack. He heard the crack of several ribs as he hit and lay there, panting, with his eyes closed.
A dreadful premonition drove the lids open again and his gaze rose to the hillside a few paces away, just below the path. The Numidians were almost entirely gone, now, but somehow the expert horseman who led them had managed to slip from his own horse as it fell, and he now stood on the hillside drawing his sword.
Brigius swallowed and slowly pulled himself upright. By some trick of the gods, the undergrowth hid them from the prince and his guards. Apart from the few remaining Numidians who clung to the turf above the path while death was rained down upon them, there were no witnesses to the prefect advancing on him with a furious expression and a drawn blade.
Brigius reached for his own sword hilt and realised with dismay that the buckle on the baldric had snapped in the fall and the sword had vanished somewhere amid the bracken and grass. His desperate fingers scrabbled around his belt to the hilt of his pugio dagger and he yanked it free, wincing at the pain the movement caused among his damaged ribs.
‘You Britons. You’re all animals. Like the Dacians and the Germans and the Sarmatians. You live poor, pathetic lives in your mud hovels, scratching a living from the shit your Roman masters leave behind. You join the auxilia? It will not change you. You’ll never be Roman. You’ll always be a Maeatae dog in a man’s tunic.’
‘I’m not Maeatae, you prick,’ Brigius snapped. ‘I’m Votadini. Loyal Votadini. Hearty Votadini. But more than that, I am Roman. Roman enough to abide by the Pax Romana set by the first emperor. Roman enough to see the profit in inclusion and peace and the waste in war.’
In answer, the prefect’s blade sang through the air, its humming passage close enough to Brigius’ face that he had to lean back and almost fell over the stump.
‘I will take your head back to Vindolanda and use it to piss in.’
The blade swished past again, and this time Brigius had to drop to a crouch, his ribs shrieking in pain. His mind, rather unhelpfully, suddenly furnished him with an image of Atto standing in front of his father’s head on a stake while Senna wailed her grief. There was a strange strength in the image, though, and he gritted his teeth as Vitalis took two steps towards him so that he was in adequate sword range, his feet carefully placed amid the myriad hazards of the slope.
Brigius leapt.
From his crouch, he sprang forward. Not up, where he could face the prefect, but down. He landed at Vitalis’ feet and as he tasted damp earth and wet bracken, his hand came down, punching his dagger into the prefect’s boot.
A pugio is no thin, tapering blade. It has a waist and widens to a leaf shape with a wicked tip. That point slammed through the leather of Vitalis’ boot and carried on through the foot, snapping bones and carving muscle until it burst through the sole beneath and into the earth.
The prefect, who had been gleefully triumphant for a fleeting moment and preparing to drive his own sword down through the prone soldier before him, suddenly jerked straight and screamed, almost an echo of the ritual ululation of his men. Brigius ground his teeth and yanked the blade from the foot before plunging it with equal strength into the other boot, ruining that in the same manner. Again, Vitalis screamed.
Brigius unfolded like the wrath of gods in front of the howling, horrified Numidian officer. Reaching
up, he plucked the expensive spatha from the man’s unresisting hands, snarled, and gave him a push.
The last thing he saw of Prefect Vitalis was the cartwheeling shape bouncing from rock and branch until it hit the stream at the valley bottom and lay still, his lifeblood joining that of his men as it flowed ever onwards to help fertilise the native lands for their next harvest. At least he was good for something.
Struggling and clutching his side, Brigius staggered back up the slope, careful to wrap the prefect’s sword hilt in his scarf as he climbed, just in case the prince recognised it.
The ambush was over. As he had fought Vitalis on the slope, so the last of the Numidians had died on the path. The emperor’s son remained in his saddle, a baffled expression on his face as his praetorians began to dismount and struggle up the slope.
They would find nothing. No attackers. Senna was too bright for that. The woman of her family and friends – those who hated the Numidians and wished only to see them gone – would even now be melting away in the wilderness. Senna and her people knew this terrain better than any Roman. In fact, Brigius suspected she would be waiting with Atto when the praetorian column plodded back into Vindolanda.
‘You,’ called Caracalla in his deep, gravelly voice. ‘What was this? Why were we left unharmed?’
Brigius struggled onto the path, clutching his ribs, blood leaking through his tunic and the chain shirt from where he had struck the stump and caught himself on twigs and sticks as he fell.
‘The prefect’s men were not popular with the locals, Highness,’ he said simply. ‘They had been too vicious to allow for any hope of peace. The Maeatae, the Selgovae and the other local tribes are unforgiving. They have sought vengeance against the riders.’
‘But not against me?’
‘No, Highness.’
Caracalla gave a noncommittal grunt as two of his praetorians called down from the top that the hillside was empty.
‘You will go ahead,’ the prince said quietly to Brigius.
‘Highness?’
‘Ride as fast as you can for Vindolanda and report our glorious victory over the Maeatae to the prefect of the Second. Arrange for an appropriate welcome upon my return. We shall be but hours behind you.’
Brigius, slightly taken aback by the shift in the prince’s mood, saluted and staggered off to find one of the few horses still present and riderless.
He would owe an altar to a deity or two for the way today had turned out.
Epilogue
Brigius stood on the wide platform where the old fort had been, Senna wrapped in his right arm, his left bandaged to his side but his fingers playing with Atto’s unruly hair. Across the plateau, the prince Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, whom the world knew as Caracalla, strode with hands clasped behind his back alongside Decimus Carellius Victor, the commander of the Second. The emperor’s son seemed to have recovered his spirits quickly, aided no doubt by the lavish victory celebration Carellius Victor had laid on for his return from battle. Now, the future ruler of the empire prepared his next campaign, taking the reins of the British beast from his father’s feeble hands, while the old man lay sick in Eboracum.
‘Will he campaign against the Maeatae?’ Senna asked under her breath.
‘I doubt it. I believe the Maeatae and the Caledonii are safe for now. He has claimed victory over both, either with his father or alone. It would somewhat diminish that victory’s value if he then had to go to war with them again. I believe he will move to the north east and put down minor tribes there. It matters not whether they are important or dangerous. To him, they’re just names to claim a victory over.’
‘Thea’s brother reckons from what he’s heard that the prince hates it here. He reckons that if the old man dies, the prince will be gone within the month, and his brother with him.’
‘Well that’s something to look forward to,’ smiled Brigius, then hissed at the pain in his side.
‘You should be resting.’
‘I am resting,’ he replied. ‘And taking the opportunity to relax. Remember, when I go back it will be as chosen man to Centurion Scapula. A serious pay rise. You might have to move out of the livery and to somewhere a bit more fitting’
Senna snorted.
‘Perhaps a palace? Don’t be a fool, Brigius. We put that money away for your retirement so we can buy a farm, and no more gambling with Strabo. You know his dice are loaded.’
‘And I can sit on our farm with my leg up and turn slowly into your father, disapproving of the Romans who churn up our lands with their patrols, and waffling on about the old days when Caracalla was here and we fought like lions.’
‘What’s a lion?’ asked Atto, his eyes still locked on the parading soldiers.
‘You know Thea’s cat? Not like that.’
The boy flashed him an irritated look, but was too fascinated by the armoured figures stomping around the turf to argue.
‘Is it truly over, Brigius? Did we prevent the end of our people?’
‘Your people,’ he reminded with a cheeky grin. ‘Perhaps. But one day maybe we’ll all just be Roman and no-one will argue anymore. There’ll be no barbarians. Just citizens.’
‘What’s a citizen?’ asked Atto absently.
‘Well, you know Thea’s cat?’
Senna slapped him around the ear.
Authors’ Notes
All the characters in this story are fictitious with the exception of the infamous Caracalla and his father, the ailing emperor Severus. Ancient accounts of their exploits in the north of Britannia are both sketchy and confusing, but archaeology shows a massive military expansion there at the time. We have attempted to fill in a few of the gaps around Cassius Dio’s assertion that Severus sent his son to lead a second campaign in the north, in which the soldiers were ordered to “invade the rebels’ country, killing everybody they met.”
Severus died in Eboracum (York) shortly after this story ends. Herodian says Caracalla then murdered his father’s supporters and attempted to take over the army. “When the soldiers refused to uphold him, Caracalla signed a treaty with the barbarians, offering them peace and accepting their pledges of good faith. And now he abandoned this alien land and returned to his brother and mother.” - but coins were issued in the following two years proclaiming a Roman victory, which suggests that the fighting may not have ended quite so soon.
Dio tells us that when Caracalla returned to Rome he had his younger brother murdered in his mother’s arms, and that he also wiped out thousands of his brother’s supporters. After six years of violent misrule, Caracalla was himself assassinated by his own men.
Vindolanda is one of the best-explored sites on Hadrian’s Wall, and we can highly recommend a visit. (We’re told there really is archaeological evidence for growing of vegetables on the ramparts!) Remains of the rows of round houses that appeared during one of its many rebuilds can still be seen, and their purpose has been the subject of much speculation. The idea that they housed North African cavalry is one of the less ‘mainstream’ suggestions – but it came from a knowledgeable source, and set us thinking, “What if…?”
Pinning down the exact location of the British tribes is a challenge. According to Dio: “The Maeatae live next to the cross-wall which cuts the island in half, and the Caledonians are beyond them” and in view of the archaeology we’ve made that Hadrian’s Wall rather than the Antonine Wall further north, thus placing the Maeatae in the Borders region, rather than north of Falkirk.
Horrea Classis is Arbeia in South Shields, not actually part of Hadrian’s Wall, but acting as a supply port for the entire system and which, in the end, had all of fifteen granaries. Twin Rivers was inspired by Shankend, and the Valley of the Stag Spirits by terrain south of Kielder, where one of us once spent an interesting time with her eyes shut, praying for her horse to keep his footing.
On a side note we would like to thank the wonderful Kate Quinn (read her stuff? You ought to) for stepping into an editorial role and pointin
g out hiccups, flaws, and various places where there was just plain room for improvement. Thank you, Kate. You are a twinkly cosmic object!
This story was inspired by our desire to explore some of the motivations and aspects of life on both sides of the coin in Roman Britain. Here we can see not only Roman and Briton, but Briton in defiance of Rome, Briton in acceptance of Rome, Briton in the service of Rome, but also the fact that even within the ranks of the Roman military and aristocracy there are cultural divisions as deep as those between Roman occupier and languishing Briton. We had a lot of fun with Senna and Brigius and we hope you did too.
Ruth & Simon, March 2017
Also by Ruth Downie:
The Medicus Series:
Much of what Legionary medicus Ruso has been told about Britannia isn’t true. Unfortunately much of what he’s told by his local expert – the enigmatic and independent-minded Tilla – may not be true either. And when it comes to murder, somebody is lying to both of them.
“Human, satisfying and meticulously researched, Downie’s series is always a pleasure to read.” Imogen Robertson, Historia magazine
Medicus (formerly Ruso and the Disappearing Dancing Girls) – 2007
Terra Incognita (formerly Ruso and the Demented Doctor) – 2008
Persona non Grata (formerly Ruso and the Root of all Evils) – 2010
Caveat Emptor (formerly Ruso and the River of Darkness) - 2011
Semper Fidelis – 2014
Tabula Rasa – 2015
Vita Brevis – 2016
Anthology:
A Year of Ravens – A novel of Boudica (2015)
For more information, visit
Bear and the Wolf Page 6