The young Thracian lay back stiffly on a padded couch recovered from the temple’s barricade with his chest heavily bandaged and his eyes fever bright with whatever drug he’d been given to ease the pain. He had insisted on attending the final briefing even though he could barely stand. Falco stood among his cohort commanders with his face set in a mask of grim intent and refused to meet Valerius’s eyes. The men surrounding him took their mood from their leader, but there were those who couldn’t hide the signs of their grief or their nervousness. He searched for any other suggestion of weakness, but found none. These men still had their pride, even though time had marked them as it had marked the uniforms they wore. He knew some resented his youth, but with Falco’s support he had no doubt they would accept his authority. Lunaris leaned against the side wall, his tall frame relaxed and his face expressionless.
‘I have had word from our scouts.’ Valerius’s voice silenced the subdued murmurs. ‘If the Britons march hard, their vanguard will be here well before dawn. It is difficult for one man to judge, but the trooper who carried the message believes that Petronius’s spy did not exaggerate their strength.’ He paused and waited to see if any of them reacted to that terrible truth. There were no doubts now. They would be enormously outnumbered. ‘Yet any man who has studied history knows that sheer numbers need not guarantee the outcome of a battle. Alexander had only half as many troops as the Persian Darius when he triumphed at Issus. Caesar himself defeated Pompey the Great at Pharsalus when he was outnumbered by more than two to one.’
‘Not twenty to one, though.’
Valerius was surprised at the intervention from Corvinus, whose support he had assumed. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘Not twenty to one. But these were soldiers fighting soldiers. We are soldiers fighting barbarian warriors. Does any man here doubt that ten legionaries are worth a hundred of these Britons?’
‘No!’ At least half of them growled the reply, and Valerius smiled.
‘Two to one, then.’ To a man, they laughed, even Falco. He allowed them their moment and then continued seriously. ‘I do not intend us to fight fifty thousand or even ten thousand. We will burn every bridge but one and the rebels will be drawn to the remaining crossing like wasps to a rotting peach. Only a few thousand will be able to cross at one time and those thousands will die before our swords.’ He didn’t allow any arrogance to creep into his voice. These men were not fools. ‘No, I do not expect to win,’ he answered their unspoken question. ‘I am no Caesar or Alexander and there are too many of them. Even a veteran’s arm must tire. We will bleed, just as they do. That is why I have fortified the temple. At the last we will withdraw here.’ And here we will die. They all knew it. No one needed to say it.
‘Why not fight from the temple in the first place?’ Corvinus demanded, and was rewarded with a rumble of support. ‘With close to three thousand men and enough food and water we could hold the grounds for a month.’
Valerius shook his head. ‘And watch Boudicca burn your city to the ground around you?’
‘She will burn it in any case.’
‘Yes, but she won’t just leave a few thousand warriors to starve us out and march on Londinium with her army intact. If they are fifty thousand strong now, how many will rally to their cause if they destroy all that is best of Roman Britain? A hundred thousand, perhaps more. Enough even to overwhelm Paulinus and his force. It would be the end of the province. We cannot allow that. By forcing her to do battle we have the opportunity to tear the heart from the rebel army, here at Colonia.’
‘Why do we exist if not to fight, Corvinus?’ Falco agreed. His voice was tight with emotion. ‘Were all those days on the exercise ground just for sweat? No. I have lost everything I loved today and I will not watch idly as the woman responsible marches past to bring the pain I feel to thousands more.’
Valerius knew Falco’s was the decisive opinion. Time was running out. There could be no more debate. ‘Send engineers to burn the bridges. Prepare your cohorts. We will move into position before dark.’ He had deliberated long and hard whether it was better to subject the veterans to a night in the open and the stiffening of ageing limbs, or risk the confusion of deploying in the darkness an hour or two before dawn. ‘Bela?’ The cavalry commander raised his head with a grimace of pain. ‘Pull your horse soldiers back. They can do no more now.’
As the officers filed out he called Lunaris across. ‘I want you in the temple and you are promoted to decurion.’ The big legionary opened his mouth to protest, but Valerius raised a hand. ‘No arguments. I need a man I can trust in command of the place where we will make our stand. We don’t know how things will be when we fight our way back here.’ He smiled sadly. ‘At least with you in command I know I will have somewhere to run.’
As dusk fell, he stood by Colonia’s north gate listening to the evening sounds and staring north. It was a blessing to have time to stop and think after a day of constant decision. The night was warm and the air still, and pairs of bats chased unseen insects between the buildings and the trees down by the river. He heard the unmistakable shriek of an owl and felt a sudden deep melancholy. Where was she now? He remembered the sweet scent of her silken hair and the softness of her flesh, the tenderness of lips he had never had the opportunity to kiss often enough, and dark eyes that flashed like wildfire; the wonder of a knowing like no other. She would support the rebellion, he guessed; her father’s death had given her enough reason to hate. But would she join it? No. Cearan would keep her safe; honest, dependable Cearan who would now be torn between his duty to his queen and his determination to prevent his people from suffering. How different things would have been if he had taken the throne for himself. With a conscious effort he put the Iceni nobleman from his mind. This was no time to be feeling sympathy for a warrior he might face on the battlefield in a few hours. Had he done enough? That was the question he must ask himself. Was there any detail, however small, he had not considered that might save one legionary’s life or cost one of Boudicca’s warriors theirs? He felt a twinge of doubt boring into his left temple like a carpenter’s drill. Doubts? Of course he had doubts. Even Caesar must have had doubts on the night before a decisive battle, but like Caesar he had to hide his doubts from everyone. He could have withdrawn the veterans back to Londinium with the convoy of women and children and saved thousands of innocent lives. It would have cost him his career and his honour, but that would have been a small price to pay. Was that why he didn’t do it, to save his honour? He shook his head. No. Boudicca had to be stopped, or at the very least tested. If he could stop her here, or even make her check for a day, Londinium might be saved, and with it the entire province. He was right to fight here. Right to leave the town and the temple and make her attack him on his own ground and his own terms.
He looked at the sky: the light was dying. Soon.
The sound of marching feet on the metalled road behind him echoed from the houses lining the street, iron nails crunching on the compacted surface. He turned to watch them pass. The veterans of Colonia, each one a son of Empire. First Falco, at the head of his command, his sturdy figure hidden beneath a scarlet cloak and his eyes lost in the shadow of his helmet brim. At the last moment the proud head turned and the chin lifted and the old soldier gave Valerius a nod that told him more than any words. He answered the gesture with a salute, his fist clashing against his armour, and he saw Falco smile. Behind their standard-bearers five militia cohorts followed him, parading down the slope with their pila on their shoulders and a precision that would have graced an emperor’s triumph. Each of them had lost a loved one today and he felt shame that he’d believed they would be diminished by it. Everything about the way they marched could be encapsulated in a single word. Resolve.
Behind the veterans came the bulk of the men he had brought from Londinium, minus the fifty who remained with Lunaris at the temple complex to strengthen the garrison of civilian volunteers. They must be wondering what gods had brought them to this place and this fate when they
could still be back in their barracks. And what of himself? Did Neptune laugh when he called up the storm that delayed the ship carrying his replacement? If things had been different he would have been halfway home by now and, Maeve apart, would he have given the island another thought?
He followed in the column’s wake as Falco dispersed his men, and then wrapped his cloak around him and lay down among the Londinium vexillation on the damp grass beside Gracilis, who had marched with him all the way from Glevum. There had never been much likelihood he would sleep but his choice of partner guaranteed wakefulness. The Campanian muttered unintelligibly through clenched teeth and from time to time he cried out as if he were already fighting the battle that would come in the morning. Eventually, Valerius could take no more and wandered in the dark down towards the bridge.
The last of Bela’s saddle-weary cavalry troops rode across from the north bank as he reached it, guided by the torches of two of Falco’s veterans. The unit’s commander rode with his head bowed and looked to be almost asleep in his saddle.
‘What is the latest news of the rebels?’ Valerius reached up and shook the rider’s arm, taking in the rank scent of hard-ridden horse. The eyes snapped open and the man stared down at him. He had been one of those who had helped rescue Maeve from Crespo but for a few seconds there was no recognition in his eyes. ‘The rebels?’ Valerius repeated.
‘When we left them they were six miles away, beyond the ridge yonder. I think we were on the army’s right flank, but it was impossible to say for certain. They are like a swarm of bees: just when you think you understand their route and their purpose a section will break away for no good reason and march off in a completely different direction. We lost two good men that way, trapped when they got too close.’
‘Their numbers?’
The cavalryman shook his head. ‘I can give you no numbers. All I can say is they are too many.’ Valerius frowned. Insubordination or just plain truth? The horse shook its head, spraying him with sweat, and he caught the bridle to steady it. The troop commander leaned low to retrieve his reins, so there could be no mistaking his whispered words. ‘Take your little army away, tribune. If you stand against them they will crush you into the dust and not even notice.’
Valerius looked round to see if anyone else had heard. ‘A man could be whipped for saying such things,’ he said.
The Thracian smiled wearily. ‘A man does not need to fear the whip when he will be dead tomorrow.’
‘Will you fight?’
‘That is what you Romans pay us for.’
‘Then take your troop and spread them out along the bank to the east. Get what rest you can, but I need to know if the enemy plans a crossing elsewhere. Wait until an hour past first light and return here. Bela will have further orders for you.’
The cavalryman held out his hand. ‘Matykas, decurion of the first squadron. It was good advice, tribune; at least you’re a Roman worth dying beside.’
A few minutes after the Thracians had ridden away Valerius noticed a glow in the sky above the ridge. As he puzzled over it, Falco joined him at the bridge.
‘The rebels?’ the militia commander asked.
‘Perhaps they’ve camped for the night.’
‘A small cooking fire for a large army.’
Valerius grunted noncommittally. He was remembering the two lost Thracian cavalrymen and the tales he had heard of the Wicker Men, the great human-shaped baskets Caesar had written of, into which the Celts threw their sacrifices to be burned alive. He hoped the two troopers were already dead.
They waited, and Valerius knew without looking round that every eye in the meadow by the river was focused on the ridge to the north.
‘There,’ a voice cried.
The first was to the east, just a dot of flame that, as they watched, flared into something much larger. A moment later it was followed by a second, further west this time, and a third, lower down the slope. Within minutes the dark blanket of the slope was dotted with flames like fireflies on a Neapolitan night.
‘They’re burning the farms,’ Falco said unnecessarily.
Valerius didn’t reply, but kept his eye on one particular spark at the top of the slope and to his left, where Lucullus’s farm – Maeve’s home – was blazing. The fact that it now belonged to Petronius and had been stripped of everything she owned provided only a small consolation.
‘Thank you,’ Falco said suddenly.
Valerius looked at him in surprise, and shook his head. ‘You have nothing to thank me for. If I had done things differently, perhaps…’ He thought again of the scared faces and the crying children.
‘What’s done is done,’ the militia commander said. ‘If they had stayed they would have died in any case. You came to our aid when no one else would help us. Catus Decianus,’ he spat, ‘set a flame to a tinder-dry thicket and left his people to burn. Paulinus, too. Where is our governor when we need him? Or the Ninth legion, who could have been here now if our warnings had been heeded? They thought we were just panicking old men. But you came, Valerius, and even when you saw your commission was impossible you stayed. We are grateful.
‘I have a desertion to report,’ he said, before Valerius could reply. ‘Corvinus, the armourer.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘One of our bravest and best. It is hard to believe.’
Valerius remembered the goldsmith’s nervous manner earlier in the day. Or was it yesterday? In any case, he couldn’t find the anger or the outrage befitting a commander who had been betrayed. How much difference would one man make?
‘Can you blame him?’
Falco looked at him seriously. ‘We are soldiers, tribune. We fought together in the legions and sweated together in the militia. When the people of Colonia laughed at us as we exercised with our rusty swords we ignored them because it was our duty. We may be old men, but we still believe in duty. And comradeship. And sacrifice. So, yes, I blame Corvinus, though he is my friend. And, if he is caught, I will nail him to a cross, though he is my friend. If at the end all I can do is die together with these men, I will count it a privilege.’
He turned away, but Valerius called him back and held out his hand. ‘I too will count it a privilege.’
As Falco returned to his veterans, Valerius’s eyes were drawn back to the hillside where Lucullus’s farm still burned, and Boudicca’s horde gathered in the darkness.
XXXIII
A dull hint of ochre on the far horizon was the first evidence of the new day, and with it came a subdued murmur that seemed to shiver in the air and which puzzled Valerius until he recalled the words of the Thracian cavalryman on the bridge. Bees, he had said. They are like a swarm of bees. And that was it. The sound, which grew in volume with each passing minute, resembled an enormous beehive: unseen but omnipresent, a danger, but not yet dangerous.
Then, beginning in the east, second by second and yard by yard, the darkened slope opposite was illuminated as the sun rose gently from the far end of the valley between Colonia and the ridge. And on the slope they saw their deaths.
Each of them had heard the figure of fifty thousand, but it was just that, a figure. Now they saw the reality and their minds rebelled against the evidence of their eyes. Boudicca’s host covered the rise like a vast living blanket of multicoloured plaid, and still they came in their multitudes: tribes and their sub-tribes and their clans, each identified by its brightly coloured banner and led by a chief on horseback or a warlord in one of the small two-wheeled chariots of the Britons. Valerius studied them, attempting to discern some pattern or guiding mind, but he couldn’t tell one tribe from another in the shifting throng. The Iceni must be a force among them, with their wronged queen somewhere at the centre of that great mass; the Trinovantes come to regain their homes and their land, and the Catuvellauni to avenge the insults of a decade; men of the Brigantes and the other northern tribes sickened by Cartimandua’s betrayal of Caratacus and, inevitably given these numbers, even from Rome’s allies, the Atrebates and the Cantiaci, drawn by the
scent of blood and loot like carrion birds to a new kill. Through them and around them wove hundreds more chariots carrying the half-naked champions who would take their place at the front of the battle line in the position of greatest danger. Most of the warriors, though, were on foot, trudging through the meadows and the fields with their shields on their shoulders, weary now after their long march from Venta, but still eager. Many would be trained fighters, armed with the best their people could provide, but more would be the farmers, tradesfolk and servants who had picked up anything with an edge or a weight that would kill the hated enemy. All had hungered for seventeen long years for the chance to drive the Romans from their lands; rest could wait. They would be fearful, because there could be no turning back, but that would only make their hate stronger and more dangerous. Among them loped the huge attack dogs trained to tear out an enemy’s throat with a single bite. Behind them, each identified by a single column of smoke, lay the way posts of their coming, the villas and farms the veterans and the settlers who followed them had taken years to build, now nothing but smouldering rubble. The militiamen watched with disbelief as a constant dark stream of humanity flowed upriver from the coast, out of the woods and over the ridge to swell the numbers opposite them. This was not an army; it was a nation on the move.
Valerius attempted to study the enemy with a detached soldier’s interest, but soon he felt his mind begin to vibrate and his ears fill with a pounding he recognized as the first signs of panic. Despite the coolness of the morning a trickle of sweat ran slickly down his spine. Further along the line he heard a man vomit and another mutter a low prayer to a god who was not listening. Nothing in his imagination had prepared him for this. All his plans and stratagems were shown up for what they were: pointless diversions which would no more harm this enemy than a flea on an elephant’s back.
Hero of Rome Page 25