by Manda Scott
On the ship, the signal was heard and answered and all semblance of secrecy was gone. Lamps flared to light in the half-dusk, casting a chain of wavering fires onto the sea. One, burning more brightly than the rest, began a slow, disjointed progress up the rigging, carried by someone who climbed one-handed and took good care in doing so. When it was halfway up, it began to swing rhythmically from side to side. At this signal, a skiff set out from the ship’s side. It did not look big enough to carry five adults, two youths and a babe, but Cunomar had no doubt it would seem bigger as he approached it. At any rate, it answered the question of how any or all of them might reach a ship standing eight spear-casts off shore.
The skiff speared the water. The oars left foaming trails of pale green light, showing its progress like tracks in sand. It aimed straight for a projecting spur of the headland that one could see was well within reach. Cunomar, watching it, felt a surge of hope such as he had not felt in two years of captivity. He turned to Cygfa, saying, “The traitor’s god may have given him—”
He stopped. The Romans hunting them, having no need for secrecy, had not dragged their blades in the mud. Far back inland, the dying sun drew fire from the length of a gladius and showed up the mass of moving shadows around it. Cunomar choked.
Seeing his face, Cygfa spun her horse. Valerius was faster. The wine flask dropped from his hand and rolled on the turf. He spoke in Belgic, very briefly, then in Eceni. “Mac Calma, take the slave- boy. Ride for the skiff. I’ll hold them.”
Caradoc answered. “One man against nine? I think not. The rocks here curve well and will guard our backs and flanks. We will stand and fight them as warriors. If we are to die, they will remember us for it.”
He had led thousands in war. His voice could contain them all, and protect them. Cunomar felt the certainty of it, the courage and honour that was his birthright, and knew hope for a second time, and a heady pride. The boy drew the blade mac Calma had given him and felt the weight of it drag at his arm. His hope faltered. Now it came to it, he was not certain he could manage even a single swing. He held the blade one-handed and felt for his knife and knew that if the horse jigged beneath him he would lose both and be taken alive and if that happened his father, at least, would stop fighting. It had happened before in the imperial audience room and had cost his father the use of his shoulder. Cunomar would not see it happen again. He shifted both hands to the hilt of the sword and rested the blade on the neck of his horse as the decurion had done. Something inside him melted, messily, and he feared for control of his guts. The bound leather sword-grip slipped in the sweat of his hands and it was all he could do to keep it from falling.
Cygfa tapped his thigh. “Get behind me. If I am killed, or the horse dies beneath me, stay close to mac Calma instead. If there is a chance, ride for the skiff.”
Cygfa was fully alive now, so that Cunomar remembered truly who she had been on the morning before the last battle when he had watched her braid the barred feather into her hair with Braint. He remembered, too, how he had felt and the curses he had spoken. He felt something similar now, but then envy had been a simple, unsullied thing and now it was tainted by her clear care for him and whatever he felt for her that he could not name. The crow feathers in her hair flew and spun as she turned her head, catching his eye, the marks of a warrior, which she had earned and he had not. She did not mean to flaunt them, at least not at him, but still a kernel of resentment glowed in his chest, firing his resolve.
“No. I will fight at your left, as your shield.” He smiled as he had seen his father smile before battle. “Trust me.”
For a long moment she stared at him, her eyes strange, then said, “Good. It’s time you made your kill, and if we are to cross to the other world in Briga’s care, it would be good if you came to her a warrior.” She grinned as she had once done for Braint and, for the first time, Cunomar understood the comradeship of battle; he loved her and she loved him and they would fight the enemy as equals, each protecting the other. A blossoming joy merged with the fear so that he could not tell which it was that choked him.
Cygfa said, “If we’re going to be shield-mates, you must do as I say without question. Will you swear to me now you will do so?”
He remembered an oath from long ago, sworn on the head of his infant sister. He repeated it word perfect and was pleased to see her eyes widen. “Very good.” He thought she looked impressed. “Then keep your horse’s back to the rock and don’t dismount unless you have to. And stay on my right, not my left. That place is yours today.” She glanced past him and raised her arm. “Philonikos! Bring your horse in here behind us.”
The youth came. He looked ill with fear. Belatedly, at Cygfa’s prompting, he drew his knife. It shook in his hand. Cunomar smiled for him, as he had for Cygfa. “Their armour is weakest under the arms,” he said, having heard it from his mother. “Stab for them there if you can. Or go for the eyes.”
The boy nodded sickly. Cunomar marked again in his mind the spot on the youth’s chest where he would have to stab to end his life cleanly when they were overwhelmed.
The remaining warriors had brought their horses in at his right hand with the rock to their backs, each protecting the exposed flank of the other except at the ends, to Cygfa’s left and Caradoc’s right, where the rock curved round to keep them safe. At the end of the line, Caradoc swung his blade, testing the limit of his right shoulder. When it was clear he would not be able to fight that way, he moved his shield to the right and swung his sword with the left. They learned such things in the warriors’ school on Mona, but Cunomar did not think his father had learned it well, and even if he had, the scars on his left wrist made it weaker. Caradoc said something inaudible to Cwmfen and she changed sides, coming to his right. Like her daughter, she was whole and supple, but the babe Math was strapped to her back and hampered her movements.
Along the rest of the line, mac Calma and Dubornos, dreamer and singer, stood together on Caradoc’s left. Dubornos asked, “Will they have archers?”
Valerius shook his head. “Not unless they have brought them from the town guard.”
Mac Calma said, “There are no archers in Gesoriacum.”
“But I can count more than nine in their line. Your centurion has called on reinforcements from somewhere.” Cygfa said this last and was right. The enemy had slowed now, knowing themselves seen. More than a dozen men strung out in a line in the darkness, marked by starlit glimmers of bronze and unsheathed iron.
Cunomar tried to count the exact number of enemy blades and could not. The hilt of his own sword still slipped in the running sweat of his palms. He gripped it with both hands and repeated to himself the oath he had sworn to Cygfa. All warriors felt fear, his father had told him so; the test of true courage was to fight in spite of it, not in its absence. The thrill of absolute terror vibrated in his chest and he swore to himself in Briga’s name that he would die a warrior, true to his heritage.
The advancing line was close enough to see the detail of the enemy armour, if not their insignia. Dubornos, squinting, said, “I can count eight more besides the nine that have followed us. The new ones are Gaulish cavalrymen.” He glanced sideways at Valerius. “You were with the Gauls when you forced the salmon-trap, were you not? Maybe they’ve sent your old troop against you.”
Valerius was stiffly white. The thought, apparently, was not new to him. “Maybe they have,” he said.
He was not part of their group but had placed himself in front and to the left. In the tribes, only one resolved to stand and fight in single combat—or to die—would do so. As if remembering late these two alternatives, he spoke sharply in Belgic to the slave-boy riding behind him, who shook his head, clutching the back of the man’s tunic more tightly. Valerius lifted his arm as if to hit him and stopped suddenly, staring out into the night. He let the arm fall.
“Stay if you will,” he said, and then, “That’s the Cockerel on the standard, not the Pegasus. These are not the Quinta Gallorum. He’s bro
ught a detail of the town guard.” The relief was audible to them all, and the spare, unvaunted courage as Valerius pushed his horse forward. “Now would be a good time to pray that Marullus truly has brought no archers.”
He stopped in full view of the enemy, raised his hand in a cavalry salute and shouted.
“Marullus!”
The strength of his voice was astonishing. It was clear that he had fought on battlefields where an officer might need to be heard at a distance, shouting to his own men or, as here, calling the name of the man who led his enemies.
“Marullus!” He shouted a second time and the name hung clear as beaten bronze in the silence.
The enemy halted, granting him the honour of a hearing. No arrows fell from the night to punish his impudence.
As if speaking from a memorized text, Valerius said, “Father! Greetings in the name of the Slain Bull and the Raven. A son should not oppose his Father, nor be opposed. I wish you no ill but I am under oath to god and emperor. Let their will be done.”
Marullus’ voice was deeper and it, too, had known war. It shook the chests of all those who heard it, as Neptune’s might. It was not unkind. “The god’s will is unknowable but the emperor has named you traitor. His will is law. You will die now or later. Better for you that it be now.”
Traitor. Mac Calma had said it already but it had more certainty now. The word drifted like snow in the night, coming down again and again on those who stood waiting with their backs to the sea and the last taste of freedom. One could imagine the death Rome offered a traitor, and fear it.
Valerius’ voice was steady. “Who is emperor?”
“Nero, sworn successor to Claudius. You know that. You saw the black smoke of the lighthouse fire.”
They had all seen it. Even Cunomar had known it signalled their certain doom. The decurion had been alone in believing otherwise.
Still casting his voice to the dark, Valerius shouted, “My orders were taken in good faith from a living man. If his successor wished to countermand them, he had only to send word.”
“He tried. You cut the throat of the bearer who had tracked you for two days to deliver exactly those orders to you in person.”
Valerius fell silent. In his lack of words was Cygfa’s unvoiced accusation. See? You killed without need. No true warrior does so.
Mac Calma knew nothing of the slain messenger. Breaking the silence, he said quietly, “Thank you. They will not turn back now but you have done your best and we are grateful. There is still time for you to leave. The track to the west is clear and leads to villages where there are those who do not support Rome. I think they will not follow you when they have us penned here.”
Valerius laughed harshly. “And where would I go? If I am named traitor in Rome and Gaul, then as much so in Britannia. The Prima Thracum has no use for an officer who has committed treason against his emperor. It seems the god has spoken and he no longer promises success. Perhaps in the afterworld, he will explain why.”
He looked out into the night. He ran his sword along the crook of his elbow, wiping the blade free of mud so that the rising moon and the stars raised a glimmer on the surface. Raising it, he shouted a final time, “Your choice, Marullus! We will test the son against the Father.”
More quietly to those around him, as if ordering his cavalry troop, he said, “Be ready. The rock prevents them from attacking the flanks and so they will send half the Gaulish auxiliaries as a spear-head to force a breach in the centre then come at us in line abreast. If the spear-head works and you are split into two groups, form circles with your backs to the centre and the weakest inside. Keep as close as you can to the rock; it will act as a shield.”
He raised his blade in salute and his face held the same dry, wine-fuelled mockery he had maintained for their two weeks of journey. To any and all he said, “Good luck. If your gods still listen, pray to them now for a clean death in battle. We are outnumbered by more than three to one. It should not take long.”
However much they loathed him, they could not call him a coward. In the moments before the two lines closed, Cunomar heard him speaking aloud in a tongue that was neither Eceni, nor Latin nor Gaulish. To untrained ears, it sounded like a litany of names, spoken in defiance. At the end he heard three spoken hard in Eceni, as a summoning. The last of them was the hound’s name, Hail.
With bitter vehemence, Valerius cursed the many names of his god in the tongue of the eastern magi who had first brought him to men. He did not want to die. He did not want to face the ghosts without Mithras’ protection. He did not want to fight against Marullus, whom he respected as much as any officer of the legions and more than most. He particularly did not want to fight and die in the company of Caradoc of the Three Tribes who may or may not have betrayed him and of Luain mac Calma who may or may not have sired him. If he had to do all these things, then he wanted a shield, badly, and the company of Longinus Sdapeze who, alone of all men, could still settle him before battle, could make him laugh and set impossible wagers that made the business of war seem less brutal and more of a game.
Mithras did not answer the curses any more than he had answered the day’s prayers. He sent seventeen trained men against five adults and two children and it was not a game. Valerius was grateful only for the mare; he had picked her himself from the emperor’s stables before he left Rome and she was battle trained to a standard even Longinus would have appreciated. In the stretch of time before the first clash of iron, Julius Valerius, who had once been Bán of the Eceni, called in the ghosts that judged him most harshly, challenging them to stay with him until he died.
The Gauls came in a spear-head to break the centre as he had said they would. Valerius held the mare back until the first had crossed blades with Caradoc and then launched in from the side, acting as his own one-man wedge to break their group. It was not an orthodox manoeuvre, but it was what an officer would do. He would not have it said later by Marullus that he had acted either rashly or without courage. As the mare plunged forward, he heard the Belgic boy squeal in terror and offered a quite different prayer to the god, of regret for a child’s needless dying.
He killed the first of the enemy on a reflex, striking the unprotected throat of a man who would kill a weaponless slave-boy simply because he was an easy kill and only afterwards, as the body fell away from him, did he see that it was a Roman, not a Gaul, whose life he had ended and that he knew the man. It was too late by then for regret; regret led to death and his body would not allow it.
Wrenching his horse away from another slicing blade, Valerius passed Cygfa, who killed as one born to it, keeping Cunomar safe at her side and Philonikos behind her. Breaking the sword arm of a Gaul for her, he heard her shout to Cunomar, “That one is yours!” and turned back in time to see the man use his shield to batter aside the boy’s powerless stroke and thrust the boss on through for his face. It was a killing blow, aimed to crush skull and vertebrae to the marrow. Valerius’ sword moved in a line of its own making, slicing up beneath the tilt of the man’s helmet into the only unarmoured space that would ensure a kill.
The shield dropped from nerveless fingers, missing the boy’s face by less than a hand’s breadth. The Gaul toppled from the saddle. Valerius saw Cunomar’s mouth contort in a scream that may equally have been despair or hatred or, less probably, thanks, but heard nothing. The noise of battle was already too great to hear one voice above many. Other Gauls attacked from the sides and a boy’s missed chance of glory mattered not at all.
The defenders killed and took wounds but none died. The rocks protected their backs and sides so that the enemy could only come from the front. In that much, Marullus had misjudged them, or had not thought to send scouts ahead to check the terrain. Valerius knew a blossoming hope until, in a moment of quiet, he heard the clatter of scattering shingle, like rain on a roof, and, looking to his right, saw a fresh body of horsemen riding hard from the west, the side away from the town. They blocked all chance that any of the defenders might
slip back from the battle line and run for the skiff, which was doubtless why they were there.
The officer in him admired Marullus’ tactics afresh even while he sought to counter them. The mare spun back of her own accord. Two men came at him, one on either side, and Valerius pulled on her soft mouth, hurting her, taking her up and out of reach. He felt the sudden draught on the small of his back and knew the slave- boy had fallen away and was sorry. He killed the first man and found that Luain mac Calma had taken the second. The dreamer should not have been there; he was needed elsewhere. In the knot of warriors that held both Caradoc and Dubornos, Valerius could hear the false ring of iron on at least one weak blade. When he took time to look, he could see that Cwmfen had moved her horse closer to Caradoc’s right, shielding him, and that the warrior was visibly tiring. He had no love for any of those who fought with him, but if their deaths were to be entwined, he did not want it sooner than he could help.
Marullus’ second line of men moved in. Breaking a thrust spear—the Gauls had spears!—Valerius shouted to mac Calma, “See to Caradoc. I am well.”
“Then get the boy back and ride for the skiffs. It is you they are trying to kill, not us.”
It was true. The brunt of the Roman attack was aimed against him. Only the dangerous shifting shingle of the beach and the warriors on either side stopped them from overwhelming him. In the mayhem, the dreamer shouted again, “Get the boy!” His blade danced right and left, making space about them. His hair and his cloak flagged in the wake of his turns. “Ride for the skiffs, man!”
“Can’t … new troop of Gauls in the way … death to move from here.”
“No. They’re our Gauls … friends…” A blade cut the flank of mac Calma’s horse and the beast reared, flailing, spoiling the killing stroke. The dreamer slashed back in his own right. Iron belled on iron. There was a chance he might live, which was more than could be said for the others.