Medi-Evil 1

by Paul Finch

  Behind, on the second raft, Ursus watched uncertainly as the fog drew in. Soon no land at all could be seen. Quiet words passed between the soldiers as the waterway floor fell away to such depth that their poles were no longer any use. The great shafts of wood were drawn on board, and paddles appeared. The troopers knelt rather than stood as they began to row.

  Ursus watched them closely. As individuals, they were sturdy and muscle-bound. Through years garrisoned in temperate Britain, they’d lost that nut-brown tan so common to Rome’s active legionaries, yet there was a sleek toughness about them and an inner confidence that was deeply reassuring. Many bore patterns of scars on their wrists and faces. Their armour was notched and dented, the heavy rectangular shields made from curved limewood and bound with leather and bronze, now lying between them in a smart stack, bore the gashes and grazes of countless battles. If only there hadn’t been so few of them.

  “I hope you men are ready for a fight,” the engineer said.

  “That’s our profession,” replied Drusus, the man who had spoken before. He held the rank of tesserari, and nominally at least, was Livius’s second-in-command, but the optio had already made it clear that he disliked delegating authority to anyone.

  “Whoever these people are, they clearly respect nothing,” Ursus muttered.

  “Except the balancing act, sir.”

  The engineer glanced back. “What?”

  Drusus spoke again as he paddled. “What you said earlier, about the sacrifices … made to put the state of things right. If I might be so bold, sir, I disagree with you. This is a balancing act … of a sort.”

  Ursus shrugged. “As I told Livius, there hasn’t been a druid in Britain for fifty years or more.”

  “I don’t say it’s the druids. But I still say it’s a feat of re-balance.” The tesserari hawked and spat as the effort of paddling brought a gleam of sweat to his ruddy brow. “We’re the strangers out here … the intruders. Not just us, in the service of Caesar … but these fellows too.” He nodded back towards the farmers. “This is a wilderness, sir. Just the wild creatures live here. Could be we’re not supposed to come and make maps of it and build bridges and whatnot …”

  If it hadn’t been for the growing peril he felt they were in, Ursus might have chuckled. He’d often heard it said that in every dour trooper there was a philosopher trying to get out.

  “Such thinking is contrary to the spirit of imperial Rome, my friend,” he finally remarked.

  “But not to the facts of it, sir,” the legionary replied. “Haven’t we had our share of sacrifices? My great-uncle was with Varus when he and his men got chopped in the Teutoberg Forest. Three whole legions slaughtered like cattle. I also had an ancestor who barely escaped with his life from the Mesopotamian expedition. He watched forty-thousand Romans die, and was held captive long enough to see the Parthians use General Crassus’s head as a theatre prop.”

  Again, Ursus shrugged. “To regard such disasters as the inevitable backlash of fate represents a very barbarous way of thinking.”

  “These are very barbarous times, sir.”

  “Well … there’s no denying that.”

  *

  The land-mass swam before them like something unreal, its hard outlines merging with the dismal murk of the sea-fret. Clearly this ground was dry, for clumps of alder and hawthorn grew on its lower slopes, and as islands in the broads went, this one rose up a good forty or fifty feet above sea-level, the highest parts of it a diminishing scrub of gorse and bracken. The Romans had now been rowing for the best part of a day, and normally might have been glad to come ashore and lay themselves down, but the bizarre, muffled keening they could hear kept peace of mind at bay.

  Livius glanced at Jusci. “A waterfowl of some sort?”

  The Iceni shook his head curtly. He was listening intently, a faint flush to his cheeks, as if this was something he hadn’t wanted to hear.

  “You followed the trail to the best of your ability?” the Roman officer demanded.

  The tribesman looked at him. “Was … in the fen.”

  “I know it was in the damned fen, but you followed it as best you could?”

  Jusci nodded.

  Livius turned to the raft now coming up alongside them. “Ursus, you and your people remain on the water. I intend to investigate. To do that, I’ll take three men.” He turned to his troops and selected a trio. “The rest of you remain here until we signal, and that especially includes you.”

  He pointed at the three British farmers sharing his craft, all still crouching together at the stern, eyes goggling in their pallid faces. The chance that they might suddenly leap up and dash off somewhere seemed about as likely as the sun dropping into the sea. From the foggy inland, meanwhile, the eerie sound broke off briefly, then resumed at an even higher pitch.

  Ursus looked nervously at Livius. “I’m making this last plea to you … let’s take our leave and return with stronger forces.”

  The optio ignored the request, picking up his shield and drawing his Spanish blade. A moment later, he had gone ashore, the trio of legionaries behind him. These also had equipped themselves with shields. Each man carried two javelins as well, the heavier type pila with lead weights inserted at the junction of wood and iron to give them greater penetrative power. The situation might be unnerving, Ursus reflected, but any outlaw coming against these men would have to be very sure of his abilities. He shuddered all the same, then pulled his bearskin cloak on and huddled into it. It was now late afternoon, and despite the sapping warmth of the fret, temperatures were dropping and the air was distinctly clammy.

  “I’ll take the scout too!” Livius called from the shore.

  Ursus glanced at the Iceni, who stepped from the raft and followed the soldiers without hesitation. By any standards, it made sense that a commander should have his guide with him, but the engineer couldn’t help thinking that Decimus optio Livius had less honourable motives. Almost certainly, the young officer wanted the Iceni so that he could pitch him first into the fray should an ambush be launched. Whether he had considered the immense problems they would encounter trying to find their way back without a guide was anyone’s guess.

  On the island, meanwhile, the soldiers worked their way uphill swiftly on sure feet, making light work of the damp undergrowth but keeping low for fear of missile-attack. Livius made the scout go before them, though there was little need for his expertise. The odd keening grew in volume as they moved, and it soon became apparent that they were homing in on its source.

  They hadn’t come a hundred and twenty paces from shore when they broke through a green swathe of ferns and found themselves looking down into a shallow gully where movement could just be discerned in the mist. Flat on their bellies, they slid forward through the foliage until at length they could make out a small fire and the shape of someone standing close beside it.

  Someone or something … for the closer they crept, the more appalling was the creature the soldiers beheld.

  At first glance, it was a great mountain of hair and hideous flesh. It stood perhaps seven or eight feet tall, and was broad as an ox across the shoulders. Rolls of disgusting fat hung off it, particularly around its capacious waist. It had a pair of pendulous sacks for breasts, which suggested it was female, though any resemblance to womankind abruptly ended there. Its tree-trunk legs were hidden beneath an ankle-length kilt made from crudely-stitched deerskins, but its arms were huge with muscle and its hands the size of shovels, with fingernails like dirt-encrusted scimitars. It was covered all over in warts and bunions and a matted, animal-like pelt. It seemed to have no neck at all, though its head was perhaps the most horrific thing about it – boar-like rather than humanoid, with a broad, jutting snout and piggy little eyes under its heavy, sloped brow. Ivory tusks curved up and down from its slobbering, unnaturally wide mouth. The hair on its head was much thicker than on its body, growing up and out in a dense, reddish tuft, but so unkempt as to hang past its shoulders in long, greasy tang
les. Two nodules were visible at either temple – bony protrusions. If this terrible thing was in any way linked to man, their paths of descent had long ago diverged.

  “By Jupiter,” a legionary whispered, “ … an ogre.”

  “Don’t be a fool, there’s no such thing,” replied Livius tautly.

  The trooper’s face was wan, however. He shook his head dumbly. “Before we came here, they used to say these British islands were infested with ogres. In the age of the Republic, a cargo ship was wrecked off the eastern coast. The few survivors, they said, were butchered by monstrous beings. Only one man escaped to tell the tale, and forever afterwards he was a gibbering idiot.”

  “Like you!” the optio hissed. “Iceni … what is that thing?”

  Jusci gazed down at the figure as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “I hear stories … but I not think it …”

  “Why is it making that wretched noise?” one of the legionaries asked.

  “Is not,” said Jusci slowly. “Noise come from there. See?”

  Beside the creature, on a hefty spit, what appeared to be an enormous lump of red-brown mud hung over the crackling fire.

  “Great merciful gods!” a soldier replied. “It’s a cooking-pot. It’s the slave. That thing’s packed him alive in clay and now it’s cooking him!”

  His voice rose inexorably as the horror of it dawned on him, and the misshapen creature below looked sharply round. The soldiers were unable to react, simply staring open-mouthed. Without any doubt, the high-pitched keening came from the great bulk of suspended clay and was now clearly audible as a succession of prolonged, inhuman squeals.

  The captor, meanwhile, with heavy, bull-like snorts, came quickly to the foot of the slope, craning back its fat neck to stare upward hungrily.

  “It heard us,” a soldier hissed.

  Livius felt his muscles tensing. Could it see them through the dense undergrowth? Had it heard them? Suddenly, he realised, orders were expected … a life and death decision was required.

  “Back to the rafts,” he said quietly.

  One of the men remonstrated, but the optio was determined. “Back to the rafts!” he snapped, his mind whirling with memories of the three full-grown men the monster had overpowered, of Castor’s firm young limbs broken repeatedly to be tied together in gruesome knots. “When we meet it, I want a full complement,” he added.

  They filed down through the gorse and bracken, making their way to the shore in a quick but controlled manner. Jusci, normally so calm, seemed equally discomforted by what he had seen, glancing continually over his shoulder as he brought up the rear. When they got back to the water’s edge, the remaining trooper from the first raft had come ashore and was now standing guard. The three farmers remained on board, clumped together and shivering. Some distance behind them was the second raft, stationary on the mere. The seven men on board it stood watching.

  Livius was about to call to them when there was a sudden tremendous surge of water. An enormous shape exploded upwards from the depths of the fen, directly below the second raft. Despite the combined weight of the men on top of it, the flimsy craft capsized with ease, pitching all seven of them into the water.

  It was a second ogre. By its even greater size and hideousness and the dense curls of hair on its barrel chest – distinctly lacking in breasts – this one was the male. In its right claw, it held a roughly fashioned instrument of appalling brutality – a great stone hammer, with which it now proceeded to batter and smash the second barge to so much matchwood.

  Ursus found himself down in an ice-cold world more like soup than water; green algae hung suspended, black mud swam like the thickest paint. When he finally broke the surface, chaos reigned around him. He just had time to see the murderous beast towering over him before someone yanked at the collar of his tunic and tried dragging him away. Ursus turned. It was Drusus. Mad eyed with terror, the tesserari indicated that they should swim. Ursus nodded.

  Shouting frantically, the men – Romans and Britons together – plunged away across the broad. But where they headed nobody knew, for only fog-banks lay before them. And now the monster followed, howling with rage. Only chest-deep, it was seemingly able to walk and thus gained rapidly on them. The soldiers were hampered by their plate and chain, which some tried to unharness as they swam. Nearly all of them threw off their helmets; their spears, shields and javelins were already gone … lost in the depths of the marsh.

  Back on the shore, Livius and his men watched in amazed horror, rooted where they stood. The three farmers who had remained on the first raft, had scrambled ashore, hoping to find safety among the soldiers, but now a new peril had arrived. With hag-like screams, the female ogre came clumping down the slope behind them. She too had armed herself with a huge, flint-headed spear.

  For an instant, Livius’s men were too stupefied to react. Then two of them launched their javelins. One missed the ogress completely; the other pinned her in the thigh but didn’t so much as slow her down. She bounded up to them and, with a great sweep of her spear, dealt the first of the legionaries such a terrific blow on the side of his helmet that the metal caved in and the man was flung to the ground.

  The second legionary drew back his next javelin, but it was too late … she was already upon him. With a savage, two-handed thrust, she impaled the man, driving the crude weapon clean through both his shield and the banded girdle covering his belly. With gargling shrieks, gore spraying from his mouth, he clutched at the spear and sank to his knees. The ogress snatched the javelin hanging from her thigh, wrenched it free and plunged it between the legionary’s gaping lips, ramming it clear down his throat. He died in a welter of blood and bowels.

  Overcome with panic, the other troops ran, Livius among them. Indeed, the optio was at the very front. Only one man hung back. He hurled another javelin, but the ogress simply swatted it aside. She yanked her spear free from the gutted man at her feet, and went stamping in pursuit.

  The man she had clubbed down, had also recovered sufficiently to stagger away through the undergrowth, though his flight was a blind and drunken one, hot blood streaming from under his crushed helm, his arms flailing as he blundered along. Picking him out as easiest prey, the she-monster veered after him. The injured man sensed this and cried for assistance from his friends. But those few friends left could only clamber up to higher ground and then turn and watch in wonder and dismay, eyes bulging in lobster-red faces.

  Exhausted and in agony, the wounded trooper sensed his time had come. He stopped, turned and drew his sword defiantly. But the beast was upon him before he had a chance to use it. She raised the massive spear above her head, and a sweeping downward blow smashed the armour-plating on the man’s shoulder and sliced the bones beneath. He was hurled down violently, his world filled with pain, and he lay twisted and helpless as she came to stand triumphantly over him. She gazed at him, and if it was possible for her ugly, brutish face to grin, then that is what it did. Her red piggy eyes had narrowed, and glutinous drool hung from between her great yellow tusks.

  Then there was a shout – a wild and angry shout – and the ogress glanced up. Of the two legionaries left under Livius’s command, one had finally seen enough. Enraged beyond reason, this trooper hurried back down the hill alone. Uttering a wild ululation, he hurled his pilum, striking her squarely in the folds of blubber on her right side. Already bleeding profusely from the thigh, the monster now gave a roar of tortured rage but still had the strength to draw back and launch her own missile. It flew swift and true. The deranged trooper had just drawn his gladius when the giant spear smashed into his chest with the force of a battering-ram. Skewered like a chicken, he flopped backwards onto the ground, dead before he landed.

  The ogress’s monstrous visage again broke into a boar-like grin, but then disaster struck her. The legionary lying broken between her legs looked up through a mist of his own blood and brains, and beneath her animal-hide skirt, he was able to identify the region where at Londinium and Ca
mulodunum the rebelling natives had violated so many Roman women with their wooden stakes. Drawing upon his last vestige of strength, the soldier propped himself up on his shattered left arm and thrust his Spanish sword forcefully upward, inflicting as deep and clean a wound as he had ever managed in fifteen years with the Twentieth.

  The monster’s screech of agony rent the air. Bellowing frenziedly, she bore down upon the dying man with her full weight, squeezing his flesh until the bones within popped. With savage blows from her colossal fists, she hammered his face to pulpy ruin, then clawed and tore at his throat with bestial snarls, yanking out pipe and muscle, laying bare the spinal column, until at last, her own strength began to give out, draining away from her in smoking, crimson rivers.

  Never having witnessed such butchery, Livius could only watch incredulous from the higher ground. It was worse than anything he’d seen in the arena, than anything he’d seen at the cruel hands of the quaestionarii, the legion’s official torturers. It was all he could do to stop himself hiding his eyes. He turned slowly, realising it bore on him to assess and re-organise what remained of his command.

  It came as a frightful shock to see that of the four men beside him, only one was a soldier.

  *

  Ursus could feel his fifty years tugging at his heart as he struggled toward the reed-beds ahead. He was a fit, healthy man and was not encumbered by armour, for which reason he’d managed to stay ahead of the younger legionaries. But he knew that he couldn’t have gone on swimming much longer.

  If he’d expected land, though, he wasn’t to find it. At least, not dry land. When he rose gasping to his feet, he found himself knee-deep in muddy shallows. Clattering forward through the rushes succeeded only in sending waves of ducks and grebes into blind flight. In whichever direction he floundered, there was no apparent end to the marsh.

  He stopped, panting hard and mopping the mud from his face with his sodden sleeve, then he turned and stared behind. The rest of the men also came ashore in a straggling, breathless group, winded, coughing, but still tottering wildly on … for close behind, the male ogre fast approached. Even as Ursus watched, the monster was able to throw itself forward, and with a furious lunge, it caught hold of the rear-most legionary.