Arthur Imperator

by Paul Bannister

  “We just cannot defeat this army head-on,” I told my assembled officers. “The odds are too heavy. We must either trap them, surprise them or bluff them, or all three. I’m leaning towards a trap where they will be unable to deploy all their force at one time, and I am thinking about this place here-” I showed them a map.

  The Saxons were now close to Lincoln, which should be safe from them, as the invaders had little siege equipment and that well-defended citadel on a hill would not tempt them to linger, for I had ordered the land around laid waste. Starving the Saxons of supplies, our bedrock policy of attrition, called resource tactics, meant cutting their supply lines and stripping the country bare. Scorching the earth might hurt our peasants, but it would make an invader move on. This, I reasoned meant the Saxons would continue north to confront us at Eboracum. I planned to meet them elsewhere, and showed my officers just where. Mentally, I ran through my usual checklist: objective, intelligence, communications, supply, personnel and transport. Then I addressed the tribunes and prefects to explain the strategy.

  If we could persuade the Saxons to stay to the east side of the river Trent, we could confine them between it and the Humber’s estuary. The Trent ran north and emptied into the Humber 30 or so miles before that wide river met the German Sea. My hope was to tempt the Saxons to the south bank of the Humber, onto a strip of sandy land between its mile-wide flow and a vast marsh to the south. I knew the region. We had surprised the Parisi tribe there by building a hidden crossing from the Humber’s opposite bank. With luck and the right incentives, we could meet the main Saxon army in a place where they had no room to fully deploy, and our smaller but more professional force could defeat them. It was a slender chance, but it was the best we had.

  What might tempt Skegga’s army into that watery trap was bait, and I knew what to use. I gave Grimr some careful instructions for his fleet, and he sailed away that afternoon, down the Ouse and into the Humber, to carry out the preparations. Cragus, the commander of the heavy cavalry, also had his instructions, and my newly-promoted tribune Celvinus, now commander of the light cavalry, trotted his columns out of the Decumana Gate the next morning.

  Our pioneer and engineer cohorts followed, taking a long baggage train of equipment, and I ordered several cohorts of archers, the last of my house guard Chevrons and a half-legion of infantry to go with me on our part of the mission. I was disappointed to see that Candless, the Caledonian Pict who had been so enthusiastic about going to war, seemed to have quietly vanished, but there was a great deal else to occupy me, and I soon forgot about him.

  Myrddin arrived that day, listened to my proposal with interest and agreed to help. I think he was secretly delighted, and I gave him several assistants so that he could set to work.

  My war horse Corvus had gone with Cragus and his heavy cavalry, so I rode out of Eboracum, perhaps for the last time, on a tough little moorland pony. I had just a dozen outriders. We were cloaked and cowled like monks, our swords hidden. We seemed to wish to leave undetected, but we did leave in daylight and as I hoped from what Guinevia’s later messages told me, spies in the city were soon on their way to tell Skegga what we had done. We caught glimpses of the scouts who followed us at a discreet distance and we were careful to let them keep us in sight.

  Some miles down river, we came to Seletun, a hamlet raided years before by Hibernians, one of whose actions led to me recovering my father’s silver and amber badge of British office from the escaped slave Mullinus. I had arranged to meet a sizeable infantry force there and we moved on with them south and east, to cross the Trent and march along the south bank of the Humber, the place where I wished to lure Skegga. The terrain was perfect for my plan: a river almost a mile and a half wide on one hand, a vast marsh on the other. We moved along the sandy banks for several miles until we came to a place Grimr had scouted and told me about. The Saxon spies who trailed us stayed inconspicuous and we affected not to have seen them as we set up a camp.

  It took three more days, but the wolf eventually poked his head into the trap, to take the bait. Our hidden outliers warned me in plenty of time that the Saxons were coming in force, and we lit the signal fires. As the invaders moved up the Humber’s bank to trap us like a cork going into a bottle, we moved away, down to the eastern beaches of the estuary, out of the bottle’s base and onto Grimr’s longships. We left a few ponies behind, but they were the only captives the Saxons took that day. We simply sailed across the river and left our enemies on the wrong side of it.

  Skegga had marched his men hard to catch our small force between the river and the coast, so he halted at the old Parisi settlement to rest them for a few days. There were some crops to be had there, since I had ordered the region spared, and the whole Saxon horde seemed to have moved in, soldiers and camp followers alike, to rest and eat.

  Once the locust-like multitude had stripped the area clean, the Saxons began their slow move back west, and we met their vanguard at the River Trent with the larger part of our force. Our archers and infantry used the Trent as a bulwark and the slaughter as the invaders struggled out of the water and up the steep banks was fearsome.

  “They never got the chance to form their shield walls, lord,” one of my centurions boasted later. “They waded what they could, then came out of the water with more arrows sticking out of them than a hedgehog has spines. They couldn’t charge at us, they were dead meat.”

  The Saxons suffered the punishment for two hours, then withdrew while they sought another crossing of the river. As dusk was falling, Celvinius and his light cavalry caught them and cut the unprepared columns of foot soldiers to pieces. Again, the Saxons retreated, retiring to their new camp, where we heard the sounds of their drinking and their fury for the whole night. In the morning, I knew, we would face an organized shield wall with all the devastating power it could bring to a battlefield, but I had no intention of waiting.

  Grimr had beached his longships two miles east of the Saxon camp and landed his men after dark. Many of them carried crossbows as well as spears, and they moved quietly along the south bank of the Humber to our rendezvous. I stood on the north bank, waiting for the tide. Under the swirling water in front of me and my elite force of foot soldiers was a hidden causeway and a set of concrete piers. The wooden roadbed that would turn those piers into a bridge across the falling tide was ready to be floated out by a cohort of pioneers. They had done this once before, when we had constructed that same secret crossing to surprise a rebellious tribe. Now we would use it to save Britain.

  Myrddin came silently to my elbow and coughed discreetly. “I am quite looking forward to this,” he said. “I have never been in an actual battle before.”

  “You won’t be in any battle, my lord Myrddin,” I said abruptly. “You will stay back, behind your assistants. I do not want you and your gifts taken away by some scrap of iron.”

  He snorted huffily. “I am quite capable of looking after myself,” he declared. I turned away. The last thing I wanted was to argue with a sorcerer, and I needed his full cooperation in the coming hour. Bite your tongue, I muttered to myself. The tide was dropping, and I signalled to the engineer troop to move. They pushed out the timber roadbed to float and waded along the underwater causeway to the sandbank that was rapidly rising out of the river.

  The timing was exact, and daylight began to show as the pioneers made the last of the roadbed fast. We had a small group of infantry already on the far bank, shivering and soaked from their crossing, but the rest would cross in relative comfort. The first of our troops were wading the causeway when the flames erupted in the distance.

  XLVII Firedrake

  Upriver, on the southern bank, Cragus’ heavy cavalry had stormed into the Saxon camp, emerging from the gloom to throw torches of blazing pitch among the sleepers’ tents. Drunken, dazed Saxons were staggering out to the confusion of thundering horses, flames and shouting soldiery. As they began to form a ragged shield wall, our own infantry emerged from the dark, in wedge formation
and shoulder to shoulder behind their big heavy-bossed shields, to clash against the Saxon line.

  First, the rear ranks hurled volleys of heavy iron-bladed javelins over their comrades’ heads, then the front wedges crashed into the Saxons’ ragged line.

  They smashed shield to shield, stabbed and thrust with long spears, pushed the Saxons back and when one fell, stamped him with their nailed boots as they moved forward, leaving him to the next, onward-pressing rank to slaughter. Our determined formations split the Saxons and they fell back. That was when Celvinius’ light cavalry charged in, hacking and stabbing, driving the broken line back still further. But there were far too many Saxons to be defeated in minutes, or in a single charge. Even as their fragmented shield wall collapsed, another was forming to the rear, under the bellowed commands of King Skegga himself.

  I saw him there, for I was now across the river, on the Saxon’s right flank, unnoticed. With me, I had a small force of archers and infantrymen, a group of Suehan sailors armed with crossbows and spears and a tall wizard in a long grey gown, and I hoped it would be enough to defeat a Saxon horde.

  The enemy had formed a long and competent-looking shield wall that would surely wrap its ends around our own, surround and hack our warriors to the ground. My small force could only be useful if we had some magic. And that was when Myrddin saved Britain. I nudged him, he gave an impatient wave and the battalion of archers he had drilled for the previous few days, and which surprisingly included the two Celt huntresses who were Guinevia’s slaves, raised their bows.

  Myrddin caught my glance at the two women and grimaced. “Needed every archer,” he said. I looked again. Was that Guinevia and several slaves with lighted oil lamps in their hands? Before I could ask Myrddin, he dropped his upraised arm and with a sound like harps being plucked, the archers released their specially-prepared arrows fizzing into the sky above the enemy.

  Explosive fire dragons rained down on the Saxons. The effect was devastating. Our troops had seen a demonstration and had been given instruction, but even for them the sight of the oriental devil-fire was awe-inspiring, and they halted. The effect on the Saxons was stunning. Many dropped their shields and turned to run, and that was the moment when the British centurions began the shouting: “Punor, Woden, Saxnot!” they bellowed. Our ranks took up the war cry they had been taught, beating the enemy ears with the evil names that threatened death.

  A second rain of crackling fire dragons exploded overhead, and again the chant of the names of the most dreadful of Norse demons erupted in the dawn gloom. Some Saxons turned to locate our small group of archers, and Myrddin produced more magic. He looked like a ghost. He had smeared his face and hands with the luminescence of the piddock shellfish and he breathed its fake fire at the Saxons who were running at us. It halted them like startled deer.

  At that moment, Grimr’s crossbowmen fired their bolts, each with its fire drake tip of flaming, crackling salt petre, level into the hostiles’ ranks. A few men fell, but the sparking, fiery bolts’ real impact was from the comet-like trails they made when they flew directly into the Saxon mob. With the bellowed names of fearful demons in their ears, the ghostly face of the fire-breathing wizard and the meteor trails of fire both smashing into them and dropping on them from the skies, the superstitious Saxon host broke and ran.

  Our British cavalry, led by dragoons on the heavy Frisian horses galloped in, each horseman supporting a foot soldier who clung to the man’s stirrup leathers. A few yards short of the enemy ranks, the infantry dropped clear. The horses crashed the line, the dragoons stood in their stirrups and slashed the big spatha swords around them, the foot soldiers who seemed to have come from nowhere ran into the gaps and the Saxons broke.

  Soon the dragoons were hacking and plunging through the fleeing Saxons like reapers in a wheat field. The lighter cavalry went in as they had trained, in the Parthian way as horse archers, galloping in then turning to fire over their mounts’ rumps to deliver volley after volley of arrows at short range, then retreating nimbly if needed.

  A bloodied decurion cantered up to me, leading Corvus, and I climbed onto my war mount’s back. So, I became a cavalryman again, and Exalter and I went to taste blood. My heart was singing. I knew we had the measure of our enemies, and we did. We sent many to the feasting halls of Asgard that morning.

  A good portion of the invaders’ horde tried to fight their way across the Trent, hoping to escape south, but our infantry held them, and just at a time when our line was weakening, Candless and a cohort of Picts arrived to reinforce it. I told him later that I thought he had abandoned us, but he simply grinned that no Border reiver would pass up the chance for loot, and the Saxons must have made a fine collection from the soft southern people, must they not?

  By the time full daylight broke over the scene, the Trent was pink from the blood of floating corpses, and the Humber was washing bloodless white bodies out to the open sea. Hundreds of refugees had stumbled into the marshlands and a long column of disarmed Saxons was being made to pass under the spear, sign of their new status as slaves. I had the usual decisions to make about executions. Defeated soldiers do not always make good slaves, they are strong men and desperate. The old Romans either killed them or sold them as gladiators, but the latter course was not really viable to me. I ordered most of the big Saxon warriors killed. Regrettable, but necessary.

  Some offered gold in return for their lives, but our men took that anyway. The camp followers, wives, children, whores were rounded up and penned. Slave traders would arrive soon enough to fill my coffers, as the southern slave dealers had an unending appetite for fair-skinned females.

  I ordered all of the Saxon warlords executed publicly, and set the example by hacking off the head of King Skegga myself. He died bravely, asking to hold his sword as he knelt to Exalter, for dying with sword in hand would admit him with honour into the mead hall of Odin.

  Some of Candless’ Picts wanted to inflict the ‘blood eagle’ on Skegga, but I ruled that execution was enough punishment for the Saxon king. The eagle is a brutal torture that involves severing the ribs at the spine, then dragging the victim’s lungs out of his opened back to make warm, bloody wings over his shoulders. That death is one of suffocation, if the victim does not die of shock and blood loss.

  I declined to use it. Torturing one invader would not deter the next, and might lead to worse atrocities being committed on our people by vengeful raiders.

  My decision was simple. I was Imperator and a British jarl. I was not just a lord of war, I had united the tribes of Britain and I had a nation to build and protect. I needed to come to terms with the Christians, who wanted to oust our pagan gods, I had an uneasy peace with the Picts, and had quieted the Hibernian sea raiders. My greatest fear was the return of the Romans. I had defeated them once, and had escaped their wrath another time, but my enemy Maximian would return. I had executed a Caesar and he and his armoured legions would not forgive, or forget.

  And, the Saxons would invade again, it was inevitable. British cavalry, ships, magic and spears had saved us once. Could it happen again? I had only a mind-wounded sorceress and an eccentric wizard to help me, our gods were being supplanted and the white Rat of good fortune had vanished. In the reeking smoke of that killing ground, as wounded men were out of their misery or others had their lives ended because they were too dangerous, I decided that I should gamble. I should take my battles to the enemy’s territory and force the Romans’ hand while they still fought on their eastern borders. Only then could I defeat them convincingly, and settle Britain’s peace.

  I needed to invade Gaul.

  Historical and other notes:

  Although this trilogy begins by following the general outline of the life of Carausius, the narrative of the second book necessarily must take liberties with history. In Arthur Britannicus we read how a soldier became admiral, and then emperor. This was Carausius, a Menapian from what is now Belgium, whose Roman enemies claimed he was of ‘the humblest birth.’ O
r, he may have been nobly born, perhaps even the son of a Roman administrator.

  Carausius’ later actions in referencing poetry on his coinage indicates a higher level of education than would be expected from a peasant upbringing. Some sources attribute Roman ancestry to him, which may be supported by his name, a classic Latin one. Some sources say he was a British or Irish prince.

  Even by Roman historians’ disparaging accounts, he was a skilled river pilot who joined the Roman army and became a successful soldier, then admiral of Rome’s British Channel fleet, based in Boulogne/Bononia. The evidence also points to him being a charismatic leader.

  Around 284 CE, he was accused of diverting pirate loot to himself and was summoned for court martial and likely execution, which may have been a political move to rid the emperor Maximian of a rival. Carausius’ response was to seize power in northern Gaul and Britain, places where he commanded legions as well as a fleet.

  His ambition was to extend his military sway beyond Boulogne, even to Rome itself, but he was frustrated by Maximian, who was tasked with bringing the renegade to heel. The Roman’s first endeavour, in 289 CE, was a failure. The new fleet he had built was either destroyed by storms or more probably was defeated by the seasoned flotilla Carausius took with him when he defected to Britain.

  Carausius reinforced his military position there with the popular support he gained by tapping into the Britons’ discontent with their avaricious Roman overlords, and he skilfully used propaganda on his coinage to suggest he was a messiah returned to save the nation.

  The self-proclaimed emperor became the first ruler of a unified Britain, and entrenched himself behind the chain of forts he built along the south-eastern coast. These Saxon Shore fortifications were intended to guard against an expected Roman attempt to retake Britain as well as to repel Saxon or Alemanni invaders.