The Eagle of the Ninth [book I]
Page 3
The other laughed and stepped back into the chariot, and as he brought the team round, Marcus side-stepped and sprang in beside him. The reins and the many-folded lash changed hands, and Cradoc drew back into the spearman’s place, with a hand on the wickerwork side of the chariot. ‘Take them across to the dead ash-tree yonder, for a start.’
‘All in good time,’ said Marcus. ‘I am not yet ready.’
The ponies were harnessed Roman fashion, the two inner to the yoke-pole, the two outer by traces to the axles. So far, so good; but the chariot was another matter. Until now his driving had all been done in a Roman racing chariot, a mere cockle-shell with room for no one but the driver; this thing was twice as big, though fairly light, and the open front gave one a sense of being on top of the team which was new to him. To get the best out of chariot and team, certain allowances must be made. Holding the carefully separated reins high, in the approved Colosseum manner, his feet wide planted on the interlaced straps of the chariot bed, he set the fidgeting team in motion; easily at first, getting the feel of them, then steadying them from a trot into a canter, as he headed for the silvery target of the dead ash-tree. Just before it, he wheeled them, obedient to Cradoc’s direction, and sent them weaving delicately down the curved row of javelins that the other had stuck upright in the turf before his arrival, in the same way that he had woven the white Arabs between the practice posts on Mars Field, his speed quickening to a gallop, but with never a grazed wheel-hub to disgrace him. He took the team through every trick and test that their master ordered, until the moment came for a final burst of speed, and they were sweeping at full gallop round the mile-wide curve of the woodshore.
To Marcus that moment was always like being born from one kind of life into another. So must an arrow feel when it leaves the bow! It had been hot and sultry in the old life, but in this one the cool wind flowed against him like water, pressing his thin scarlet tunic into his body, singing past his ears above the soft thunder of the ponies’ flying hooves. He crouched lower, feeling the chariot floor buoyant and vibrating under his wide-set feet, feeling the reins quick with life in his hands, his will flowing out along them to the flying team, and their response flowing back to him, so that they were one. He called to them in the Celtic tongue, urging them on.
‘On, brave hearts! On, bold and beautiful! Thy mares shall be proud of thee, the tribe shall sing thy praises to their children’s children! Sweff ! Sweff, my brothers!’
For the first time he loosed the lash, letting it fly out and flicker like dark lightning above their ears without ever touching them. The forest verge spun by, the fern streaked away beneath flying hooves and whirling wheels. He and his team were a comet shooting down the bright ways of the sky; a falcon stooping against the sun…
Then, on a word from Cradoc, he was backed on the reins, harder, bringing the team to a rearing halt, drawn back in full gallop on to their haunches. The wind of his going died, and the heavy heat closed round him again. It was very still, and the shimmering, sunlit scene seemed to pulse on his sight. Before the wheels had ceased to turn, Cradoc had sprung down and gone to the ponies’ heads. After the first plunging moment, they stood quite quiet, their flanks heaving a little, but not over-much.
‘Well?’ demanded Marcus, rubbing the back of his hand across his wet forehead.
Cradoc looked up at him, unsmiling. ‘The Commander begins to be a charioteer,’ he said.
Marcus laid by reins and lash, and stepped down to join him. ‘I have not driven a team to better these,’ he said, and curved his arm over an arched neck. ‘Do I win my spear?’
‘Come and choose it for yourself, before you go back to the fort,’ said the other. He had brought sweet crusts with him in the breast of his tunic, and he held them out on his open palms to the soft questing lips of the ponies. ‘These four are the jewels of my heart. They are descended out of the Royal Stables of the Iceni, and there are few could handle them better than the Commander.’ And there was a queer note of regret in his voice, for which there seemed no reason; but Marcus was to remember it afterwards.
They drove back slowly, walking the ponies through the summer evening.
‘It will not harm them to stand for a little, now that they have cooled off,’ Cradoc said, as, after threading their way through the confused huddle of the town, he pulled up before his own house-place. He drew the reins over the ponies’ heads and turned to the dark doorway, calling, ‘Guinhumara, bring out to me my spears.’
The leather apron had been drawn back to let in what air there was, and the red fire glowed in the centre of the house-place. Marcus saw the tall girl rise without a word—she had been turning wheat cakes among the hot ash for her man’s supper—and melt into the darkness of some inner place. Several dogs which had been lying in the piled fern, with the small brown baby sleeping in their midst, came out with waving tails to fawn around their master, but the baby slept on, sucking its thumb. In a few moments the girl came back and joined them in the doorway, carrying a sheaf of spears whose polished blades caught the evening light like so many tongues of flame.
‘The Commander and I have laid a wager,’ said Cradoc. ‘His brooch against one of my hunting-spears. He has won, and now he is come to choose his spear.’ As he spoke, he took one from the sheaf and stood leaning on it with a gesture that said quite plainly, ‘But not this one.’
Those that were left were fine weapons, beautiful as were all the weapons of the Celts, perfectly balanced and deadly; some light for throwing, some broad-bladed for close work, some for war, some for hunting. The girl handed them to Marcus one by one, and he tested and examined them, finally picking one with a slender, barbed blade and a cross-piece just below the neck. ‘This one,’ he said. ‘It shall be this one, for when I hunt boar with your husband this winter.’ He smiled at her, but she did not smile back; her face had the same veiled look that he remembered on it before. She stepped back without a word, and carried the remaining spears with her into the house-place. But Marcus had already turned to the hunter, for that other spear had caught his interest, and been in his mind even while he made his choice. It was to the rest of the sheaf what a king is to his bodyguard; the shaft darkened with much handling, the iron blade perfect in shape as a laurel leaf, engraved with a strange and potent design that swirled like the eddies in running water. The weight of the head was counter-balanced by a ball of enamelled bronze on the butt, and about its neck was a collar of blue-grey heron’s feathers.
‘I have not seen the like of this before,’ Marcus said. ‘It is a war spear, is it not?’
Cradoc’s hand caressed the smooth shaft. ‘It was my father’s war spear,’ he said. ‘It was in his hand when he died—up yonder under our old ramparts where the fortress walls stand now. See, the mark is still upon it … his own blood, and the blood of his enemy.’ He parted the heron’s feathers to show the neck of the shaft blackened by an old stain.
A little while afterwards, carrying his newly-won boar spear, Marcus made his way back towards the Praetorian gate. Children and hounds were playing together in the low sunshine, and here and there a woman in a hut doorway called the evening greeting to him as he passed. It all seemed very peaceful, and yet he was filled with an uneasy feeling that the peace was only a film—a veil like that which the girl Guinhumara had drawn behind her eyes—and that underneath, something very different was stirring. Again he remembered Hilarion’s warning.
For the collar of the old war spear had been lately renewed, and the heron’s feathers were still bright with the lustre of a living bird.
In all likelihood that spear had been refurbished many times, kept bright by a son in memory of his father; and yet, he wondered suddenly, in how many of these thatched homesteads had an old spear been put in fighting trim? Then he shook his shoulders impatiently, and strode on at a quickened pace up the steep way to the gate. He was simply growing toadstools, even as Hilarion had prophesied. All this because of a few feathers. Yet even a feather might show w
hich way the wind blew.
If only they could have had a good harvest!
III
ATTACK!
IN the dark hour before the dawn, two nights later, Marcus was roused out of his sleep by the Duty Centurion. A pilot lamp always burned in his sleeping-cell against just such an emergency, and he was fully awake on the instant.
‘What is it, Centurion?’
‘The sentries on the south rampart report sounds of movement between us and the town, sir.’
Marcus was out of bed and had swung his heavy military cloak over his sleeping-tunic. ‘You have been up yourself ?’
The centurion stood aside for him to pass out into the darkness. ‘I have, sir,’ he said with grim patience.
‘Anything to be seen?’
‘No, sir, but there is something stirring down there, for all that.’
Quickly they crossed the main street of the fort, and turned down beside a row of silent workshops. Then they were mounting the steps to the rampart walk. The shape of a sentry’s helmet rose dark against the lesser darkness above the breastwork, and there was a rustle and thud as he grounded his pilum in salute.
Marcus went to the breast-high parapet. The sky had clouded over so that not a star was to be seen, and all below was a formless blackness with nothing visible save the faint pallor of the river looping through it. Not a breath of air stirred in the stillness, and Marcus, listening, heard no sound in all the world save the whisper of the blood in his own ears, far fainter than the sea in a conch-shell.
He waited, breath in check; then from somewhere below came the kee-wick, kee-wick, wick-wick, of a hunting owl, and a moment later a faint and formless sound of movement that was gone almost before he could be sure that he had not imagined it. He felt the Duty Centurion grow tense as a strung bow beside him. The moments crawled by, the silence became a physical pressure on his eardrums. Then the sounds came again, and with the sounds, blurred forms moved suddenly on the darkness of the open turf below the ramparts.
Marcus could almost hear the twang of breaking tension. The sentry swore softly under his breath, and the centurion laughed.
‘Somebody will be spending a busy day looking for his strayed cattle!’
Strayed cattle; that was all. And yet for Marcus the tension had not snapped into relief. Perhaps if he had never seen the new heron’s feathers on an old war spear it might have done, but he had seen them, and somewhere deep beneath his thinking mind the instinct for danger had remained with him ever since. Abruptly he drew back from the breastwork, speaking quickly to his officer. ‘All the same, a break-out of cattle might make good cover for something else. Centurion, this is my first command: if I am being a fool, that must excuse me. I am going back to get some more clothes on. Turn out the cohort to action stations as quietly as may be.’
And not waiting for a reply, he turned, and dropping from the rampart walk, strode off towards his own quarters.
In a short while he was back, complete from studded sandals to crested helmet, and knotting the crimson scarf about the waist of his breastplate as he came. From the faintly lit doorways of the barrack rows, men were tumbling out, buckling sword-belts or helmet-straps as they ran, and heading away into the darkness. ‘Am I being every kind of fool?’ Marcus wondered. ‘Am I going to be laughed at so long as my name is remembered in the Legion, as the man who doubled the guard for two days because of a bunch of feathers, and then turned out his cohort to repel a herd of milch-cows?’ But it was too late to worry about that now. He went back to the ramparts, finding them already lined with men, the reserves massing below. Centurion Drusillus was waiting for him, and he spoke to the older man in a quick, miserable undertone. ‘I think I must have gone mad, Centurion; I shall never live this down.’
‘Better to be a laughing-stock than lose the fort for fear of being one,’ returned the centurion. ‘It does not pay to take chances on the Frontier—and there was a new moon last night.’
Marcus had no need to ask his meaning. In his world the gods showed themselves in new moons, in seed-time and harvest, summer and winter solstice; and if an attack were to come, the new moon would be the time for it. Holy War. Hilarion had understood all about that. He turned aside to give an order. The waiting moments lengthened; the palms of his hands were sticky, and his mouth uncomfortably dry.
The attack came with a silent uprush of shadows that swarmed in from every side, flowing up to the turf ramparts with a speed, an impetus that, ditch or no ditch, must have carried them over into the camp if there had been only the sentries to bar the way. They were flinging brushwood bundles into the ditch to form causeways; swarming over, they had poles to scale the ramparts, but in the dark nothing of that could be seen, only a flowing up and over, like a wave of ghosts. For a few moments the utter silence gave sheer goose-flesh horror to the attack; then the auxiliaries rose as one man to meet the attackers, and the silence splintered, not into uproar, but into a light smother of sound that rippled along the ramparts: the sound of men fiercely engaged, but without giving tongue. For a moment it endured; and then from the darkness came the strident braying of a British war-horn. From the ramparts a Roman trumpet answered the challenge, as fresh waves of shadows came pouring in to the attack; and then it seemed as if all Tartarus had broken loose. The time for silence was past, and men fought yelling now; red flame sprang up into the night above the Praetorian gate, and was instantly quenched. Every yard of the ramparts was a reeling, roaring battle-line as the tribesmen swarmed across the breastwork to be met by the grim defenders within.
How long it lasted Marcus never knew, but when the attack drew off, the first cobweb light of a grey and drizzling dawn was creeping over the fort. Marcus and his second-in-command looked at each other, and Marcus asked very softly, ‘How long can we hold out?’
‘For several days, with luck,’ muttered Drusillus, pretending to adjust the strap of his shield.
‘Reinforcements could get to us in three—maybe two—from Durinum,’ Marcus said. ‘But there was no reply to our signal.’
‘Little to wonder in that, sir. To destroy the nearest signal station is an obvious precaution; and no cresset could carry the double distance in this murk.’
‘Mithras grant it clears enough to give the smoke column a chance to rise.’
But there was no sign of anxiety in the face of either of them when they turned from each other an instant later, the older man to go clanging off along the stained and littered rampart walk, Marcus to spring down the steps into the crowded space below. He was a gay figure, his scarlet cloak swirling behind him; he laughed, and made the ‘thumbs up’ to his troops, calling ‘Well done, lads! We will have breakfast before they come on again!’
The ‘thumbs up’ was returned to him. Men grinned, and here and there a voice called cheerfully in reply, as he disappeared with Centurion Paulus in the direction of the Praetorium.
No one knew how long the breathing space might last; but at the least it meant time to get the wounded under cover, and an issue of raisins and hard bread to the troops. Marcus himself had no breakfast, he had too many other things to do, too many to think about; amongst them the fate of a half Century under Centurion Galba, now out on patrol, and due back before noon. Of course the tribesmen might have dealt with them already, in which case they were beyond help or the need of it, but it was quite as likely that they would merely be left to walk into the trap on their return, and cut to pieces under the very walls of the fort.
Marcus gave orders that the cresset was to be kept alight on the signal roof; that at least would warn them that something was wrong as soon as they sighted it. He ordered a watch to be kept for them, and sent for Lutorius of the Cavalry and put the situation to him. ‘If they win back here, we shall of course make a sortie and bring them in. Muster the squadron and hold them in readiness from now on. That is all.’
‘Sir,’ said Lutorius. His sulks were forgotten, and he looked almost gay as he went off to carry out the order.
It was full daylight before the next attack came. Somewhere, a war-horn brayed, and before the wild note died, the tribesmen broke from cover, yelling like fiends out of Tartarus as they swarmed up through the bracken; heading for the gates this time, with tree-trunks to serve as rams, with firebrands that gilded the falling mizzle and flashed on the blade of sword and heron-tufted war spear. On they stormed, heedless of the Roman arrows that thinned their ranks as they came. Marcus, standing in the shooting turret beside the Praetorian gate, saw a figure in their van, a wild figure in streaming robes that marked him out from the half-naked warriors who charged behind him. Sparks flew from the firebrand that he whirled aloft, and in its light the horns of the young moon, rising from his forehead, seemed to shine with a fitful radiance of its own. Marcus said quietly to the archer beside him, ‘Shoot me that maniac.’
The man nocked another arrow to his bow, bent and loosed in one swift movement. The Gaulish Auxiliaries were fine bowmen, as fine as the British; but the arrow sped out only to pass through the wild hair of the leaping fanatic. There was no time to loose again. The attack was thundering on the gates, pouring in over the dead in the ditch with a mad courage that took no heed of losses. In the gate towers the archers stood loosing steadily into the heart of the press below them. The acrid reek of smoke and smitch drifted across the fort from the Dexter Gate, which the tribesmen had attempted to fire. There was a constant two-way traffic of reserves and armament going up to the ramparts and wounded coming back from them. No time to carry away the dead; one toppled them from the rampart walk that they might not hamper the feet of the living, and left them, though they had been one’s best friend, to be dealt with at a fitter season.
The second attack drew off at last, leaving their dead lying twisted among the trampled fern. Once more there was breathing space for the desperate garrison. The morning dragged on; the British archers crouched behind the dark masses of uprooted blackthorn that they had set up under cover of the first assault, and loosed an arrow at any movement on the ramparts; the next rush might come at any moment. The garrison had lost upward of fourscore men, killed or wounded: two days would bring them reinforcements from Durinum, if only the mizzle which obscured the visibility would clear, just for a little while, long enough for them to send up the smoke signal, and for it to be received.