by Manda Scott
Longinus rocked on the ice and spread his arms for balance. “You know them,” he said. “Will the Silures let us kill their men and enslave their women and children as he has promised?”
Valerius said, “If they do, it will be the first time in the history of their people. Only the Ordovices are more savage and if they are united with the Silures, nothing we can do will stop them. And then as soon as word gets out of the governor’s threat, the other tribes who might have been unsure of Rome’s enmity will believe the dreamers who tell them we come to destroy them all.”
This, too, was subversion, but no worse than what had gone before and it did not put Valerius off his counting. He leaned on a many-pronged hazel stump that had been cut long and left as a tethering post. With one hand, he tapped the rhythm of his heartbeat on the nearest stump. Out on the river, Longinus did the same, although his beat was noticeably faster. The Thracian stood rock-steady on the chalky ice with his feet planted squarely on either side of a crack the width of his fist. He had bet that the ice would hold his weight for the count of fifty heartbeats. In accepting, Valerius had not thought to specify whose heart should define the counting. He still believed he would win.
Longinus said, “So what you are saying is that the governor has given the dreamers a gift and done nothing to … that’s it … forty-nine … fifty… Now!”
He leaped a spear’s length forward onto the bank. Where his right foot had been, an ice plate no thicker than a man’s thumb tilted sideways into sluggish water. He looked up, grinning his triumph. “The falcon-headed dagger is mine, I believe?”
The knife was small, of a length to fit in the palm of the hand and not be seen. A small Horus adorned the end of it, subtly carved, with tiny beads of jet as its eyes. It had been a gift from Corvus in their days on the Rhine when the invasion of Britannia had been a fiction, a joke men shared at Caligula’s expense. Once, it had mattered to Valerius that he keep the blade. Now, he reversed it so that the handle faced the Thracian and then spun it high with an added twist so that to catch it unharmed was, in itself, an achievement.
Smiling, Longinus reached out and snatched the thing from the air. If he knew that Corvus, prefect of the Quinta Gallorum, took the falcon god as his personal emblem, he did not remark upon it. Sitting on the hard-packed snow, he said, “When the governor first made his speech, I had hopes that the western tribes might never come to hear of it. Since then, however, I have been drinking in the sewer taverns that you recommended. The word in the bottom of the wine cups is that the enemy dreamers can send their spirits as white birds to fly on the wind and that a single word, carelessly spoken, will be carried back to those who guide them. Is it true?”
The horses moved out in larger circles to graze. One of them disturbed a winter hare that neither men nor horses had known was there until she started up and ran for safety, a white rag, windblown over snow. On the far bank of the river, a dog fox stalked prey too small to be seen. A buzzard flew, mewling, across the god’s arc of unblemished blue. Each, in its own way, journeyed west, towards Mona.
The fox pounced, delicately lethal. Valerius heard the small squeal of a vole, dying. He lay back in the hard-packed snow and watched the buzzard ride the wind. If he had the knack, and if other gods than Mithras had not forbidden it, he could see how it would be possible to slough off his body and mount the sky to fly as that one flew. If he pressed a thumb to the scar of the god’s brand and felt again the pain and the way it had spun him out of himself into darkness, then it was not so hard to take the separate parts of his soul and let one out, as if on a thread, to rise up into the greying blue of the sky, to feel the buffeting wind press his body and give lift to his wings, to look down on a small herd of horses, feeding in snow, and the two men beside them, one lying vacant-eyed, the other bending over him in anxious solicitude.
“Valerius?” A hand passed in front of his eyes, breaking the thread too fast and too hard. Longinus’ face loomed too close, his breath sour with last night’s wine. “Julius Valerius? Did you hear me? I was asking if their dreamers could listen to men’s thoughts and carry word to their people? Will they take word of Scapula’s threats back to the warriors?”
The man was far too close. Valerius remembered, thickly, why he preferred to water the horses alone. He stood, brushing snow from his legs, making a distance between himself and the Thracian and whistled the pied horse. It came promptly; better than anything else alive, it knew precisely the quality of Valerius’ temper and that precise line which, when crossed, made it unwise to refuse an order. The beast would take its revenge later; this was understood.
Riding back, Longinus kept his distance. He had awaited a reply and, when none came, had mounted and turned his horse to follow without further comment. They were within reach of the gates when Valerius reined in his horse.
Without turning, he said, “The dreamers may be able to do as you say. I don’t know; I have never seen it. But even if they can’t, soldiers talk, and a nervous man passes on the threats of the strength he perceives behind him. The first time they face each other across a barricade, some stripling of the Second still in swaddling will shout it at the warriors who are about to take his life, and if just one of them understands Latin and lives beyond the battle, the rest will know the full measure of the governor’s threat.”
Longinus smiled, lopsidedly. “Then we had best hope they speak no Latin.”
“Caradoc speaks it, who leads them. And the dreamers. If they send their spirits anywhere with word of what they hear, it’s to their fellow dreamers who live among the tribes. Before full winter, every warrior in every one of the western tribes will know that Scapula intends to eradicate all memory of the Silures. It will not improve the peace.”
Two days later, the XXth legion, newly replenished and missing only a single cohort left behind in Camulodunum to guard the governor, marched west through melting snow to the aid of the IInd Augusta. They took with them food and firewood, weapons and armour, horses, mules and men, to replace those lost in the fighting. In the flurry of their leaving and its protracted preparation, the men of the two cavalry wings remaining in the fortress were given their orders, which were systematically to disarm the local tribes. The manoeuvre was to be prosecuted with force but not violence, as if the one could readily be separated from the other. Particular care was to be taken, however, at the steading of an elder of the Trinovantes who was a personal friend of the Emperor Claudius. The same elder had volunteered to make available a smith who would destroy the weapons of his warriors. For such local knowledge, the elder was paid handsomely by the new governor. What the tribes thought of him, Valerius could only guess.
“His name is Heffydd. He was one of their priests who served the old king Cunobelin and did not care much for the man’s sons. He took control of the dun in the chaos after the invasion and ordered the people to welcome Claudius when he rode in on his elephants at the head of his legions. He saved the first governor the inconvenience of a siege and spared the emperor the risk of injury. He was made a citizen by Claudius himself. We are to treat him with due respect.”
It was Regulus, the troop’s decurion, who spoke. He had the air of a man who talks to fill the silence and the silence was winning. Those around him nodded or smiled, according to rank, and said nothing; a good soldier does not chatter on his way to war.
Valerius rode in the second pair beside Umbricius, his troop’s actuary, one of the three men with whom he shared a billet. The man was pleasant enough company and did not make conversation for the sake of it, which made it possible to shut out the day. The Crow-horse stretched its legs and listened to what was asked of it. Somewhere amongst the hoofbeats of the dozen nearest horses, Valerius could hear one striding short and put some effort into locating both the beast and the lame limb by sound alone. Almost, he could have forgotten where they were going and why, but that Regulus, ever wary of silence, would not let him.
“The Trinovante steading is over the rise, in the
lee of the dyke. There’s a fort this side of it, abandoned now. Claudius ordered it built when it seemed the elder’s family might be the subject of reprisals by the natives. The Batavians manned the place before their quarters were ready within the fortress. I don’t know which would be worse—being vilified as a collaborator by your own people or left under the protection of Civilis and his homicidal tribesmen.”
An officer of the Thracians laughed dutifully. Behind him, the men of the Quinta Gallorum maintained a studied silence. Regulus was Roman and had only the barest understanding of what it was to be a people occupied by force. His troop, almost to a man, were Gauls whose recent ancestors had fought against Rome and whose tribal elders still told tales of the great heroes and their tragic subjugation. From childhood, they had been able to name those families whose members had aided the enemy and profited by it. They knew exactly which of Regulus’ options would be worse.
The two troops rode past the skeleton of the abandoned fort, now stripped of all wood, and down a long, shallow slope to the farmstead beyond. The place was bounded by a ditch and a dyke, but no stockade. Miraculously, trees still grew around it; by the emperor’s express order, they had been spared the axes of the legion. Valerius had forgotten what it was to ride through woodland under the gaze of winter crows with snow scattered like salt on black branches and dying leaves spinning light in the wind. He touched his brand and made the sign of the raven as the birds launched upwards, cawing. Seeing it, Regulus raised a brow but said nothing. Soon after his arrival in Camulodunum, he had made known his wish to serve the god and it seemed likely that, come spring and the next initiation, he would do so. Until then, he was as ignorant of the god’s ways as any other man.
Within the ring of trees, fat, long-horned cattle grazed in pasture better than that reserved for the cavalry mounts near the fortress. A red and white patched bull raised his head as the line of horses approached. He snuffed the air for danger to his herd and, seeing none, returned to the hawthorn hedge on which he had been grazing, lashing a long tongue round surviving fragments of green. At the fortress, the beef had long since been killed and salted for winter. Here, there was good grass and the neatness of the surrounding fields promised fodder for winter. This was not yet the country of people ground down by punitive taxes or the privations of war.
The steading itself sat atop a small rise. A wide track led up the slope to a gap in the turf bank. Within, smoke rose from the fires of four roundhouses and a number of smaller huts. In the spaces between, workshops, log sheds and granaries stood closed to the snow. Somewhere out of sight, a tethered hound set up a frantic baying and was joined by others, all at different pitches, so that the noise upset the horses and destroyed the mellow mood of the men.
“Gods take them, they’re doing that deliberately.” Regulus turned in his saddle. “Where are their warriors? We should have seen them by now.”
It was the question Valerius had just asked of himself and the god. He said, “I don’t know. But they know we’re coming and why. There may be warriors even amongst the homestead of a collaborator who would rather die than surrender their weapons. We should perhaps assume they’re prepared to fight, in which case we could go in fast and break for the battle line at the top of the hill. It will let them see we are ready to engage if it comes to that.”
“Good.” Regulus signalled Sabinius, the standard-bearer, who rode at his left hand. “Give us a full gallop forward and then break at the top of the hill. Bring us as close to the gates as you can.”
It was what the cavalry had trained for. In two columns, horses and men who had practised manoeuvres to the point of tedium and beyond through a summer of no action, readied themselves for a brief burst of controlled speed. Regulus said, “Now!” and the standards stabbed the sky and sixty-four horses broke from a walk to a gallop, keeping in pairs. The eyes of their riders remained fixed on their standards, waiting for the order to change. Valerius, whose mind was torn too many ways, heard at last that the lame horse was the chestnut gelding with a white blaze ridden by the decurion of Longinus’ troop. That was unfortunate. The man was a superior officer and could not be reprimanded and Valerius would have liked, just then, to shout at someone. Deprived of the opportunity, he held the Crow-horse to a steady gallop and man and beast fought each other for the chance to run all the way up the long slope to the steading.
In one moment, the gateway was empty; in the next, Gaius Claudius Heffydd, by gift of the emperor citizen of Rome, filled the space from edge to edge, made broad by the billowing of his cloak in the wind. Heffydd was not a young man; his hair was entirely white, kept in place by a thong of twisted birch bark at the brow. In the whole of the east, he was the only man openly to wear the mark of the dreamers, now forbidden. That in itself set him apart from his peers. His cloak was the yellow of gorse flowers and the reflection of it leaked like melted butter on the remnants of snow at his feet. He bore a spear with a blade such as one might use for hunting boar and a battle sword hung from one shoulder.
Sabinius was as good a standard-bearer as any in the province. At the right moment, without any additional command from either Regulus or Valerius, he raised his standard high. Two troops of cavalry, acting as one man, spread sideways and halted, precisely in line. The Gauls, Valerius thought, were that fraction sharper than the Thracians. A part of him rejoiced.
The echo of hooves hushed to nothing. In the pause while no decisions were made or orders given, Heffydd stepped forward and stooped to lay both of his weapons in a cross on the ground before Regulus’ horse. Behind him, the hidden hounds reached a frantic climax and held it. Of the hundred or more warriors reputed to be in the steading, there was still no sign.
The two decurions, Roman and Thracian, dismounted together and walked forward to meet the dreamer. Valerius sat rigidly still and fixed his gaze on the half-white left ear of the pied horse. He was close to Heffydd and did not wish to be. In the morass of regret and recrimination that infected his mind, his hatred of the Trinovantes burned as an unsullied flame.
His mother never taunted him with memories of Cunobelin or his people, she had no need. Long before he had sworn allegiance to Rome, Valerius had sworn the death of the three sons of Cunobelin and as many of their tribe as he could send with them. Two parts of that oath were fulfilled: Amminios had died in Gaul and Togodubnos had been mortally wounded in the first day of the invasion battle. Only Caradoc was left alive, the unmatched warrior who had offered Valerius friendship and then betrayed him.
News of Caradoc, last surviving son of Cunobelin, came daily from the west with word of his part in the resistance. When the messengers had presented themselves to the governor and been dismissed, Valerius bought them drinks and a meal worth a month’s pay and drained them dry of details, the better to know his enemy. On the good nights—the ones when his mother did not visit—Valerius dreamed the many deaths of Caradoc and his own part in each. When he prayed to the god, most often he prayed that at least one of these dreams be granted.
Heffydd was not Caradoc, but he wore a yellow cloak and he was within close reach, which made him a good substitute. The pity of it was that the auxiliaries had been ordered not to kill a single native without due cause. The governor, in his briefing to the officers, had been explicit.
“Use all necessary force but do not start the war afresh. Don’t enter their homes unless they give cause. If any one of them resists, make of him an example the rest will never forget, but do not wipe them out.” Scapula had stared specifically at Valerius as he said, “Remember, I want a docile tribe of farmers who will grow grain and make profit to pay off their loans to the emperor, not heaps of charred bone on the funeral pyres. These people are the tax revenue that pays the legions and dead men pay no taxes. If you kill too many of them, you’ll see it reflected sorely in your pay.”
Scapula had smiled then, and the effect was not nearly as becoming as in his son, but he was governor, second only to the emperor within the province, and every
man present had laughed.
Dead men pay no taxes. Valerius eased forward in the saddle and ran a hand down the pied horse’s neck. It was important to remember, for it and him, that they should remain calm.
Heffydd waited above his surrendered weapons. The gesture was an empty one. As the sole Roman citizen among the Trinovantes, his own weapons were not forfeit and he must have known it. He was, therefore, sending a message either to his still-hidden warriors or to the troops who came to disarm them. If the latter, Valerius could not imagine what that message might be.
Regulus did not appear to be seeking an explanation. Dismounting, he lifted both blades, examined them, exclaimed at their workmanship and returned both to the emperor’s friend. Valerius, who had been granted his citizenship by a different emperor and knew exactly its worth, chose to look elsewhere—and froze as a flagging of yellow cloaks caught his eye.
Warriors. They had moved forward silently from behind each of the roundhouses, a good hundred of them, all on horseback, all armed for battle with their circular bull’s-hide shields loose on their shoulders and their spears at their backs and their great ancestral long swords naked in their hands.
“Father of All Light, they are going to fight us.” Valerius breathed it like a prayer, thanks for his wish fulfilled. His sword grip came clammily to his hand, loose in its oiled sheath. The Crow-horse quivered once, all over, and then stood rock-still beneath him, like a hound on point. To Sabinius, he said, “Be ready to signal the—”
“My lord, no.” Heffydd was at his bridle, too close, too fast, to both horse and rider. Valerius could smell rosemary on his hair and wormwood on his breath. Underneath both, he smelled age and corruption. The dreamer’s eyes were yellowed and cloudy. Valerius fought to avoid meeting their gaze.
The old man said, “We do not come to fight you. Our warriors offer no offence. They merely wish to honour the general in the surrender of their weapons. I have shown the way and they will follow.”