Island of Ghosts

by Gillian Bradshaw

  Valerius Victor shrugged. “We’d had nothing but disputes. They didn’t want to sleep in barracks; they wanted more fresh meat and milk than they could get; they quarreled incessantly with the original garrison of the fort, and had to be confined to barracks half the time. A couple of the old garrison were killed, and the men responsible had to be executed. No, the air was pretty poisonous. But I never said that I was going to replace Gatalas as commander. I could see for myself I’d be murdered if I suggested any such thing.”

  Priscus let out a breath through his nose. “We had some of the same disputes in Eburacum.” He glared at Arshak, who smiled. “Not as bad, though. And you, Lucius-have you been breathing the same poisonous air in Cilurnum?”

  “No,” declared Comittus at once. “We’ve got on very well in Cilurnum. We’ve had some quarrels between the Sarmatians and the Asturians, but on the whole, the dragon’s been settling in very well. Hasn’t it, Marcus Flavius?”

  “Yes,”said Facilis shortly.

  “In fact,” declared Comittus, gathering himself up, “I have complete confidence in the men and officers of the Sixth Numerus of Sarmatian Horse, and I believe they are, and will remain, an invaluable asset to the defense of the province. As for Ariantes, I’ll swear any oath you like that he had nothing whatever to do with the mutiny at Condercum. No one could command the dragon better than he does, and I would be completely lost without him.”

  “Agreed,” growled Facilis. “I agree to every word of that. And if you speak to Flavinus Longus or the other Roman officers in Cilurnum, Lord Legate, they’ll tell you exactly the same.”

  There was a moment of astonished silence. “

  Well,” said Priscus at last, “I’m glad to hear it. I was glad of the Sixth Sarmatians when I heard what happened at Corstopitum. They arrived quickly, hit hard, and caused no problems afterward: I would’ve hated to demote their commander. This fellow Gatalas is dead, and the rest of his men took no part in the killing, and surrendered quietly. Very well, we’ll keep the present command structure, and call the mutiny the result of passion in one unstable man. I’ll give the Fourth Sarmatians a new commander and bring them back to Eburacum with me, and we’ll put the Second Sarmatians in their place. Ariantes, since your liaison officer and camp prefect are willing to vouch for you, you can take temporary command of the Fourth Numerus as well as the Sixth.”

  “My lord legate, no,” I said hurriedly, “It would offend Gatalas’ men enormously, sir.”

  “Why would it offend them?” snapped Priscus, glaring again.

  I spread my hands helplessly in the air. I had grown less aware of the gulf between Roman and Sarmatian at Cilurnum, but I was dropped in the middle of it now. “My lord, the fourth dragon were all… clients… of Gatalas. They kept sheep and horses of his when we were in our own country, and he gave them grazing rights and judged their disputes. He led them on raids and in war. I and my men, we were friendly rivals at best, and at worst, enemies. Now they have watched their commander die, and by his orders have not raised a spear in his defense. They have been disarmed and confined to their barracks as traitors, while I and my dragon fought a battle and won a victory. They have been humiliated-and to hand them over to me would only humiliate them more, however gently I spoke to them. They need forbearance and the hope of glory if they are to become loyal servants of Rome. No, my lord. Let me go to Condercum and speak with them. I will find out which of the squadron captains is most willing to work with the Romans, and you can appoint him and Valerius Victor to a joint command.”

  Bodica spoke for the first time. “Surely, Lord Ariantes,” she said softly, “if they’re under a joint command, they’ll believe that Gatalas was right to rebel, since the thing he was afraid of has come about?”

  “Not if it is done properly,” I replied. “Gatalas was a prince of the Iazyges, a scepter-holder. His men will not expect to receive the same honor as their prince.”

  There was another silence-then the legate’s stony face cracked unexpectedly into a grin. “The minds of barbarians are a mystery,” he said. “The place of a Sarmatian prince can’t be taken by another Sarmatian prince, can’t be taken by a Sarmatian who isn’t a prince, but might just be managed by a Sarmatian noble and a Roman tribune together. Lord Ariantes, you’re a capable man. Even your letters on pay were sensible, little as I liked them, and now your camp prefect, who has no love for any Sarmatian, has vouched for your trustworthiness. Didn’t you realize I was offering you a promotion?”

  I hadn’t, and the sudden reversal left me blinking. “My lord legate,” I said, uncertainly, “I thank you. But if you wish to make the best use of Gatalas’ dragon, you will arrange the command as I have suggested.”

  He snorted and leaned back in his seat. “When a man gives advice against his own advantage, the advice is probably good. Very well. You have leave to go to Condercum, with Gaius Valerius, and arrange the command of the Fourth Sarmatians in whatever way you and he can agree on. Lord Arsacus, you can go along with Lord Ariantes. When you get to Condercum make arrangements for your people to replace the Fourth Numerus. But first, Ariantes, you can explain to me why your troop can’t manage on an auxiliary’s pay without getting into debt. The rest of you are dismissed.”

  When I left the legate’s office an hour or so later, I found Arshak waiting for me in the courtyard outside. “Greetings, my brother!” he said, jumping up and coming over. “Congratulations to you on the victory. I hope next time I’ll be able to share it with you.”

  I caught his hand and shook it. “It wasn’t hard fought,” I said, “but I’d welcome you beside me. I’m glad you’ll be freed from Eburacum.”

  He grinned. “So am I. I swear on fire, I never thought a man could hate stone so much.”

  “You look well, though, despite it.”

  “That is the doing of the legate’s lady. I think that if it hadn’t been for her, I would have killed someone. She is a wonderful woman, Ariantes, a wise woman, a true queen.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that at all, and he seemed to realize it, because he changed the subject. “Victor is waiting for us at the military stables, if you want to start for Condercum. What was all this about pay?”

  I explained it on the way to the stables. Our troops were being offered the standard auxiliary pay, two hundred denarii a year, plus the cavalry allowance of two hundred denarii for the upkeep of one horse. However, most of us had more than one horse and we all had more armor than a Roman would. Even though we had men who could replace worn-out equipment for the dragon and didn’t need to turn to professional blacksmiths, still the cost of the upkeep of the armor would be high. Eukairios and I had worked out how big the allowance would have to be to take account of the differences, and had been pressing for the pay to be increased accordingly. Priscus had just offered me part of the sum, and suggested that we reduce the number of horses. For various reasons, I was not satisfied with this, and I told Arshak about it-warmly, because my mind was still hot with it. He frowned and asked questions.

  “I don’t understand,” he said, when we’d finished. “How do you know these things, what it costs to repair armor or provide fodder for a horse?”

  His tone was flat, and I suddenly understood all too well that what he meant was, “You’ve Romanized, more even than I expected.” And I saw in the same instant that it was horribly true.

  “I have a good scribe who explains it,” I replied, cursing myself. “I needed to learn, and did.”

  He stopped suddenly and caught my shoulder. We were just at the corner of the stable yard, standing in one of the cramped alleys of the military compound. “What are they doing to us?” he asked, looking at me earnestly.

  “What do you mean?” I replied-coolly, trying to step back from myself and find where I stood.

  “Gatalas is dead, you talk of pay negotiations and get Facilis to vouch for you, and I… Ariantes, we are scepter-holders of the Iazyges. Or we were.”

  “We were,” I said quiet
ly. “But now we are commanders of numeri for the Romans.”

  “For the Romans! Neither you nor I love the Romans. How can we fight for them?”

  “We swore to the emperor himself at Aquincum that we would do so.”

  “We didn’t know what we were swearing. We had no conception of what it meant. We thought we would stay Sarmatians but fight under another commander-but they’re making Romans of us. We eat bread and sleep in tombs and give bribes to officials. Marha! Haven’t you sickened of it yet?”

  I was silent for a moment. “I and my men have kept our wagons,” I said at last. “No. I am no sicker of it than I was when we arrived.”

  “Our wagons were broken up,” Arshak said bitterly.

  “The men got barracks, and I got a house. It stands in a row with the houses of the tribunes, and it’s made of stone. Everything is in rows, and made of stone,”-he glared furiously at the featureless walls around us-“and the Romans think we must be grateful for the comfort. I’d set fire to it, if it would only burn!” He let go of my shoulder. “But you seem to like it here!”

  “What did I have left, across the Danube?” I asked, very slowly.

  He looked at me with hot eyes. “Things here could be different.”

  “And I’m trying to make them so.”

  “You’re tinkering. Talking in their words, becoming more like them every day, despite yourself. Pay! Wagons! The problem is the Romans. The native Britons are a lot like us; we would agree with them very well, if this were a British kingdom. They have kings and queens of noble blood, who reward valor and not greed. Why should we fight them?”

  “Who has been telling you this?” I asked, and saw the answering flicker in his eyes.

  “Do I need anyone to tell me? You can’t want to fight for Rome-for the people who murdered your wife and child, insulted their bodies, and tossed them into the fire.”

  I slapped him across the face. “Don’t mention them to me, Arshak!” I told him, in a low voice, while he stared in angry surprise. “Don’t ever mention them to me!” I turned and strode furiously on into the stable.

  After a minute, Arshak followed me. I half expected him to whisper a time and place to meet to settle the argument, but he said nothing-and, as soon as he met Valerius Victor, became instantly all charm again.

  The tribune had a squadron of the Dalmatian cavalry from Condercum, and we rode out with that to escort us: I was politely given to understand that my own bodyguard would not be welcome. When we reached the fort that night, I felt that I wasn’t welcome either. “The air was pretty poisonous,” Victor had said, and indeed, it was thick with bitterness and hatred. The Roman garrison watched me and Arshak ride in the gate with a heavy sullen stare that set my teeth on edge, and they kept it up the whole time we were there.

  Though it was late, I asked to speak with Gatalas’ officers in the main hall of the headquarters building at once. The garrison grumbled but, at Valerius Victor’s insistence, agreed, and set up torches, which cast a flickering light over us and made the statue of the emperor, standing larger than life in the chapel of the standards off the hall, seem to be alive and watching. When Gatalas’ men filed in, under armed guard, they gave the statue and the Romans the same heavy sullen stare that the Romans had given us.

  I asked Gatalas’ men how they were; they released a torrent of helpless grief and resentment. Their wagons had been broken up, some of their friends had been executed for killing the Romans they’d quarreled with, some had been beaten like slaves, their prince was dead, and they had been ordered not to defend him. Worse, far worse: the Romans had burned his body. They’d watched helplessly, disarmed, imprisoned, and disgraced. Their chief consolation was how many Romans Gatalas had managed to kill before he died.

  “He revenged himself,” I agreed, trying to put a hopeful face on it, though I was appalled. “And he has what the gods promised him, death in battle. He was warned of danger from fire, but not of destruction: perhaps his soul will escape. At Cilurnum we sacrificed three horses on his behalf, and prayed to the gods for him. But you were promised good fortune and glory in war, and your prince ordered you to surrender so that you could have what you were promised. I’ve come to help you choose a new commander who can offer prayers for Gatalas’ spirit and for your own future.”

  “We have no power over who’ll command us,” they replied. “That was why our lord mutinied. He’d heard that they meant to depose him and set that tribune in his place.” And they glared at Victor, who was sitting by the tribunal, looking blank. He didn’t speak Sarmatian.

  “It wasn’t true,” I said. “They thought of doing that before they met us, but they changed their minds, and there were no plans to replace anyone.”

  They looked at me sullenly, as though they were sure I was lying. Then they looked at Arshak, who was sitting on the table swinging his foot. “Didn’t you send us a message of warning, Lord?” one of the captains asked. He was a young man, but I’d had him in mind as a possible leader for the dragon: he’d struck me as the most intelligent, as well as one of the most loyal, of Gatalas’ officers. His name was Siyavak, a slim man, with dark hair and eyes that made him stand out from the rest.

  Arshak stopped swinging the foot. “I?” he asked. “I didn’t send any message.”

  At this they looked bewildered. “Lord Gatalas showed us the message and said it came from Eburacum,” said Siyavak.

  “If there was a message from Eburacum, it wasn’t sent by me,” said Arshak, angry now. “Do you still have this letter?”

  “It wasn’t a letter,” replied Siyavak, “but we have it. Our lord left it with us, and if the Romans will let me, I’ll fetch it.”

  The Romans allowed him, and he came back carrying a bundle wrapped in black. He set it down on the floor in front of Arshak and unrolled the cloth: a set of divining rods tumbled onto the floor. Moving with sharp, angry jerks, Siyavak counted them out, and I saw that they were tied together in sequence by a red cord. They were all black; none of the chalked ones were included. “They promise death and destruction,” whispered Siyavak. “He had them read before us. And on the final rod..” He sorted through and picked one up. “This.”

  There was a pattern of scratches on the blackened surface of the rod, little lines parallel to one another or at angles. It was nothing like Latin writing, but it looked as though it might have a meaning. “What is it?” I asked, taking the thing, still bound to the others by the blood-colored cord. The whole bundle was one of the most frightening things I had ever seen: it seemed to vibrate with a menace of supernatural disaster beyond anything the mind could conceive. There would have been some white in any normal reading.

  “Gatalas said that the messenger who brought the bundle gave him the name of a man here who could interpret it,” Siyavak told us, still in the low voice, “and he said he had shown it to the man, and the man read the marks as though they were writing. ‘Beware,’ it says, ‘the Romans have lost patience. You will be arrested and replaced by Victor.’ ”

  I looked at the tribune, who was now standing over the rods and staring in confusion, aware that something had been disclosed but having no idea what.

  “Have you seen these before?” I asked the tribune, in Latin.

  He shook his head. “They’re some of the divining rods you use to know the will of the gods,” he said. “Why do they matter?”

  I explained, and showed him the stick with the markings. Something shut suddenly behind his face. “Jupiter Optimus Maximus!” he whispered.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “The writing’s… British,” he replied. “I can’t read it.”

  And he didn’t want to look at it. But he had understood something about it that we had not.

  “Someone from one of the Pictish tribes must have sent it,” he went on, “trying to provoke the mutiny, to distract our troops so that they could raid our lands.”

  “Didn’t Gatalas show these to the Romans?” I asked Siyavak.

&
nbsp; He sat back on his heels, looking at Victor intently.

  “He did not show them this,” he said, in Latin now, and to Victor, not me. “No. He went to you, though, he asked what you would do about the command of the dragon.”

  “I didn’t understand,” said Victor. “I thought he was trying to find something else to quarrel about.”

  “You said that you had once planned to be commander in his place.”

  “I only said that because I thought he knew! I told him the plan had been abandoned!”

  “How could anyone believe you, with things as they were?” Siyavak turned back to Arshak. “We thought this was from you, Lord Arshak, that you’d heard something in Eburacum.”

  “No,” said Arshak. He took the rod and slipped it out of its loop of cord, then turned it in his hands, looking frightened. “No, they can vouch for me at Eburacum. I’ve had no chance to send anything. And it wasn’t true.”

  “Who was the messenger who brought it?” I asked. “Who interpreted the markings?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Siyavak. “My lord Gatalas didn’t say.” He looked at me bleakly. “So he died for nothing then?”

  “No,” I answered. “He died for a lie.”

  “We will revenge him,” said Siyavak, his eyes beginning to smoulder. “Marha! Whoever sent him this murdered him, as surely as if they’d sent him poison! We will revenge him!”

  “You will have to work with the Romans to do that,” I said.

  He looked at Victor again; all of them looked at Victor. “Very well,” Siyavak said, angrily. “We can do that.”

  When I left next morning they’d agreed to a joint command by Siyavak and Victor and were planning a funeral service for the dead. The air was still poisonous, but no longer sullen; the hatred was balanced by a sense of purpose. I had hopes that when they got away from Condercum they might yet find a way to be happy.