Island of Ghosts

by Gillian Bradshaw

  Over the rasp of armor came a roll of kettle drums, and then a roar of hoofbeats. Arshak came galloping up from the far end of the ground at the head of all his company. His armor was gilded, like mine, and, like me, he was wearing a coat over it-but his was the coat of scalps, and he had his lance lowered and his long sword drawn in his hand. The red crest of his helmet tossed; the tail of the standard behind billowed and twisted in the wind, and over the hooves and the drums we could hear the hissing boom of wind in the golden mouth of the dragon. I’d forgotten the terror of it, and the magnificence. The drumbeat altered; the squadrons divided, one going left and the next right, then right and left, spreading out across the field, encircling it in a ring of iron. Arshak and his bodyguard came straight on toward the stone platform where the legate was sitting, and the legate stood up and looked as though he wanted to turn and run.

  I started Farna towards them at a gallop, cursing inwardly. I was quite certain that Arshak was only showing off-but the legate didn’t know that.

  Luckily, Priscus didn’t jump off the tribunal in a panic, and Arshak reined in immediately before him, making his white Parthian rear up and tear the air. As soon as the horse’s forelegs touched the ground again, Arshak kicked his feet out of the stirrups and jumped up to stand balanced on the saddle, his eyes almost level with those of the legate. He swept off his scaled cap, bowing his sleek fair head to Priscus, and laid his sword at the legate’s feet. “Arshak son of Sauromates,” he said, “scepter-holder, azatan, prince-commander of the second dragon of the Iazyges of the Sarmatians, at your service, my lord Julius Priscus.”

  Priscus let out his breath a bit unsteadily. He bent and picked up the sword. “Thank you,” he said.

  Arshak grinned. I’d forgotten how he was, how he could be-his revelry in his own splendor, his power and strength. He’d undone all his good work of the morning, swaggering before the legate in his coat of scalps, but my own heart leapt at the sight of his arrogant grace. “Show me an enemy, my lord,” he declared, “and I will bring you his head before the sun is down.”

  “There are no enemies of Rome here in Dubris,” Priscus answered. Slowly he reversed the sword’s hilt and offered it back to Arshak. “Keep this dry, and use it only when you’re told to.”

  Arshak grinned again. He slid the sword back into its sheath, pulled his helmet on, dropped easily back into the saddle, saluted, and galloped off. Priscus let out his breath again and sat down.

  I turned Farna quietly and started back to my own troop. A stone wall ran from the base of the tribunal along the edge of the field, and as I passed the far end of it, I noticed the carriage on the road behind, and the white stallion yoked between the shafts. I recognized the horse, and because of that, recognized the legate’s wife, peering through the carriage window with her cloak over her head to keep out the rain. From the way she held her head, her eyes were still fixed on Arshak.

  “What are you doing over here, Ariantes?” came Facilis’ voice. “It is Ariantes inside that armor, isn’t it?”

  I turned back to see the centurion standing at the end of the wall, where the stone gave some shelter from the rain. I did not like to explain that I’d come over in case the legate needed reassuring about Arshak, and I tried to think of a convincing excuse. Facilis, however, went on before I could come up with one. “You thought you might tell the lord legate that Arshak’s not as dangerous as he looks, did you? Too late. Anyone can see that he is.”

  “Arshak will keep his oath,” I replied. “He will fight as well for Rome as he did against her.”

  “And if all there is for him to do in the North is patrols and guard duty, with no fighting?” asked Facilis. “What will he do then? He has to fight someone. He might need to mend his coat.”

  There was no point in talking to the man. I started Farna on without saying anything.

  “Will you stand up in the saddle as well, and offer your sword to the legate?” Facilis jeered as I went past. “Or is your leg too stiff to let you? Tell me, did you ever succeed in killing the brave man that chopped it?”

  I stopped Farna and looked at him. For a moment I felt like contesting Arshak’s right to the centurion’s scalp. But a commander shouldn’t think with his dagger. “Why do you want there to be trouble with us?” I asked.

  “Because if we have the trouble out now and break you, you won’t make trouble later, when we’re off our guard,” he said vehemently. “There are Roman lives at stake. I’m quite clear about that.”

  “Clearer about it than we are,” I told him. “There does not have to be trouble. Peace will take work, yes. It will take great care, delicacy, close attention. But it is possible. We are willing to serve the emperor if we are not forced to betray the customs of our own people. You do not help. If one of my men had heard you say that, he might have killed you where you stand. Then he would die himself, for defending my honor. Is it just, Facilis? We are both servants of Rome now, or trying to be.”

  “And why should you want peace?” Facilis asked bitterly.

  “Because I am sick of war,” I said-and the strange grief I had felt when I held my armor again snapped suddenly clear.

  He looked at me in open disbelief. “You? A Sarmatian?”

  “I. A Sarmatian. And you, a Roman, you still love it?” I set my heels to Farna and sent her flying down the field without waiting for response.

  I cursed him silently as I led my dragon in front of the legate and offered him my sword-without standing in the saddle. As so often, the centurion had been right as far as he went-and then completely wrong. Mine is not a peace-loving nation, and if I had told my own men that I was sick of war, they would have stared in dismay and begged me not to talk like a coward. And yet, anyone can tire of death and killing. I saw now that I was so tired of it that I dismayed myself.

  At the dinner with the tribunes that evening, the talk was all of arms and armor and horses. It was friendly, though.

  We’d made awnings of brushwood about the main campfire, covering them with straw, which was abundant in the surrounding countryside since the harvest was just in. With more straw on the ground to keep it dry underfoot, and rugs and cushions brought from the wagons, we were able to make ourselves and our guests comfortable. I’d arranged for fresh meat for all the men while I was in Bononia, and Arshak had purchased an ox in the marketplace for the officers, together with good Roman bread, apples, carrots and leeks, fresh cheese, and a kind of sweet made from nuts roasted with honey. One of the tribunes brought a scented oil, with which the Romans like to anoint themselves at banquets, and Comittus brought some wine, as he’d promised. I fetched the set of gold drinking cups from my wagon and we drank some wine and ate some cheese while we waited for the ox to finish roasting, the Sarmatians sitting cross-legged, and the Romans reclining against bales of straw. None of the tribunes commented on the fact that the drinking cups were of Roman design. Perhaps they thought I’d bought them.

  We introduced our squadron captains to the tribunes, and received in return the important information that the eldest of the three men, the married one, Marcus Vibullus Severus, was assigned to Arshak; the second, Gaius Valerius Victor, to Gatalas; and Lucius Javolenus Comittus to me. Comittus smiled at me when he announced this. I was pleased as well. Severus seemed a more serious and responsible man than his younger colleague, and might do better with Arshak. Though Comittus had won back some esteem from my brother princes during the dinner-largely by admiring our weapons and our horses.

  “I never realized what ‘armored cavalry’ meant until today!” he exclaimed enthusiastically. “By Andate! You hardly look human in all that gear. I’m not surprised that no one’s ever beaten you on a field where you could use the horses.”

  Arshak smiled and rubbed the hilt of his sword. “We are the best cavalry in the world,” he said complacently. He and Gatalas were still wearing their armor. I’d taken mine off, and told one of my bodyguard to see to it when he’d finished oiling his own.

  “
How strong is that armor?” asked Severus. “Is it as good as plate?”

  In answer, Gatalas held out his arm in front of Severus; the tribune tapped it, then fingered the scales, and the other two picked themselves up to examine it as well. “Two layers deep?” they asked. “What about the men who have horn for the scales, instead of iron? How does that compare?” “How long does it last?” “How long does it take to make?” “Will it turn a sword?” Gatalas and Arshak smiled, preening themselves, and boasted of their armor’s strength.

  I watched them irritably. “A direct blow from a good sword will cut through it,” I said, and at once regretted it. They all looked at my leg. I was sitting with the bad knee up in front of me because it still hurt to cross it.

  “The man that hit your leg was Dacian, yes?” said Gatalas. We were speaking Latin, and he was less fluent than Arshak or myself. “He used one of the long swords with two hands.”

  Arshak’s eyes glittered. He lifted his own two hands above his head, and brought an imaginary sword down on my leg, whack, whack, whack. I’d been warned by his eyes, and managed not to flinch. The gesture was not one of serious malice-but he wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t been annoyed at my admission that the armor was not impenetrable. “It was almost an axe,” Arshak said, abandoning his imaginary sword again. “And even so, Ariantes, without your armor, you would have lost your leg. A man in this armor is almost impossible to wound.”

  I remembered lying in the mud with the Dacian hacking at me. Arshak still believed in his invulnerability. That is the problem with armored cavalry; that had been the problem for all our people. If we’d believed we could lose a war with the Romans, we never would have started one. “A long spear, used as a pike or a lance, can go through it, too,” I said, stubbornly. “And a catapult bolt. And an arrow from a Hunnish bow.”

  “But it’s very good armor,” Severus said, tactfully closing the subject. “I suppose, though, that you need a big horse to carry it all.”

  So we talked horses for a bit-the Romans were immensely impressed by the Parthian horses in particular-and then got onto hunting, and thus to shooting, and bows, and lances, and war. I said very little; my leg ached and I was tired. We ate the roast ox, and the carrots and leeks that had been used for stuffing the meat, and drank some more wine. The rain hissed in the fire.

  “The thing that amazes me,” said Comittus, as we started on the nuts and apples, “is how much the way your troops are organized resembles the way ours are.”

  “Like a legion?” asked Arshak, expressionlessly. He was sneering at Comittus, though the other man didn’t realize it. A Sarmatian dragon has almost nothing in common with a Roman legion.

  “No, no, like an ala of auxiliary cavalry,” replied Comittus, again showing himself less foolish than he first appeared. “Your ‘dragons’ have five hundred men; our quingenary alae have five hundred men. You divide the men into squadrons of thirty; we divide them into turmae of thirty. You have squadron captains, we have decurions. It’s exactly the same. Did you copy us or did we copy you?”

  “I’ll bet we both copied the Parthians,” said Severus. “They use heavy cavalry arranged in ‘dragons,’ too. I read about it in a book. And the Sarmatians used to live in the East, near Parthia.”

  “In the days of Queen Tirgatao,” said Arshak, “we fought both the Parthians and the Romans, or so the songs say.”

  I looked away. I did not like to hear my wife’s name spoken, even when the person meant was the queen she’d been named after.

  “What happened?” asked Comittus, with interest.

  “She led her people to victory, and died winning it.”

  “Do even your women fight wars?” asked Severus.

  “Not now,” Arshak answered. “But in the days of our grandfathers’ grandmothers, yes. There are many songs of the warrior queens. In those days a woman could not marry unless she had killed an enemy of her tribe.” He shrugged. “It was easier for her to do it then, I think. People used less armor. Most women can ride and shoot with the bow, and I think that in those days that was all that was needed.”

  “Queens have led armies in Britain, too,” said Comittus. “Cartimandua of the Brigantes, Boudica of the Iceni…”

  “Bodica?” I said, beginning to pay attention again. “Like the legate’s wife?”

  “Yes,” said Comittus, beaming at me. “And in fact, Aurelia Bodica is related to Queen Boudica, on her mother’s side, through the royal family of the Coritani. The sister of King Prasutagus of the Iceni married-”

  The third tribune, Gaius Valerius Victor, sniggered. He was older than Comittus, but he’d been hitting the wine harder, and was now slightly drunk. “Hear our Brittuncu lus on the royalty of the tribes! Sitting around a campfire’s gone to your head, Comittus: you’re raving in the poetry of your ancestors.”

  Comittus went red. Brittunculus: little Briton, a diminutive that oozed contempt. “You’ve got no right to use that word to me, Gaius,” he said. “You’re British yourself; your family’s lived in Verulamium for generations.”

  “Yes, but my great-great-grandfather was a veteran of the army of the deified Claudius, not a Coritanic tribesman who used to paint himself blue!”

  “My ancestors were kings!” replied Comittus, starting up.

  “That’s enough!” rapped Severus, glaring at both of them, and both fell silent and remembered us. We were all looking at them with blank, remote expressions and expecting the two to duel. No Sarmatian would have spoken so insultingly to another man’s face unless he meant to fight him-and no Sarmatian accepted an insult to his ancestors peaceably. The fire hissed and spluttered as the silence dragged. Comittus reclined again, blinking angrily, and we realized that nothing was going to happen.

  “You are a descendant of kings?” asked Arshak, to break the stillness. “And this lady also, the wife of my lord the legate?”

  “Well-Aurelia Bodica is,” Comittus said, still unhappy. “Her father is a descendant of the kings of the Regni, and her mother, of the Coritani. My family are related to her mother’s. You probably noticed I have a British name.”

  We had not noticed, of course, and I wasn’t even sure which of his names was the British one, except that it couldn’t be Lucius.

  “These… Coritani, Regni, Iceni… they are tribes?” asked Arshak.

  “Native British tribes,” supplied Severus. “Britain used to be divided into a number of different tribal kingdoms. A few tribal organizations are still used for administrative purposes, but otherwise none of them count for much.”

  “We also have tribes,” said Arshak, “but I think ours are greater. We Iazyges hold all the land between the Danube and Tisza beneath our spears, and we count for much even with your emperor. We are all Iazyges here-except Ariantes’ Roxalani. And it is because you share family with this lady, Lucius Javolenus, that you come to be a tribune?”

  “Well-yes.”

  Victor was scowling again, and Severus looked uneasy. There was something about this topic that bothered them-presumably the same thing that had caused the squabble a moment before, and not the fact that Comittus had won his place through patronage, as the Romans take that for granted. I tested it, cautiously. “The lady Aurelia Bodica seemed to me very wise and perceptive,” I said.

  I’d hit it. There was something about the legate’s lady that the other two tribunes disliked: they looked at me nervously. Comittus, however, beamed at me again. “She is, she is!” he exclaimed. “There’s not a woman in Britain to match her. Julius Priscus fell for her head over heels the moment he met her, and he’d tell you himself what an immense help she’s been to him, lucky man. You know, of course, that the legionary legate for Eburacum controls the civil administration of northern Britain as well as all its military affairs-” (we hadn’t) “well, Aurelia Bodica can sort out a lawsuit so quickly it makes you blink.”

  “Yes,” said Severus, hurriedly-then, turning to Arshak, he said, “You are also descended from kings, aren’t y
ou, Lord Arsacus?”

  “My father is second in line to the crown,” replied Arshak proudly, which effectively silenced everyone else’s boasts about noble birth.

  I lay awake for a while that night, trying to interpret what I’d heard. I had not thought about the natives of the province as a force distinct from the Romans who governed it. Victor, though, had sneered at Comittus as a Briton: there was some tension there. Aurelia Bodica was descended from two houses of native kings, and her position of influence made some of her husband’s junior officers uneasy. Who were we going to fight in the North? Facilis had expressed doubts that we would fight anyone: “What if it’s all patrols and guard duty?” he’d asked. That still meant that there was some force the Romans needed to guard against.

  I had known nothing about Britain, and I was still trying to grasp how large the island was. All through the journey I’d believed that we were being sent there to prevent us from troubling the Romans, not because the Romans wanted us to deal with trouble from someone else. Priscus, though, had come to collect us with the assumption that we were something much closer to auxiliary troops, that he could appoint his own men to officer us and use us against Rome’s enemies. Facilis’ letter revealing how dangerous we could be had horrified him. From what I’d overheard in Bononia I knew that there were more Sarmatian troops to come. That did not suggest a province entirely at peace.