by Ian Ross
Towards evening the valley curved south, and Castus saw the broad silver loops of a wider river, with gulls circling in the last light of the sun. Squinting, he remembered this landscape: in the middle distance was the dark line of the road he had followed with his men on their last march to the Pictish meeting ground. The wall of Antoninus was only a few miles to the south. He slept in the bushes above the muddy riverbank, and at dawn stripped off his clothes and held them bunched above his head as he swam beside the pony, kicking and thrashing across a bend of the river until he staggered up on the far shore.
There were warbands moving on the road. Castus saw one of them as he made his way from the riverbank: twenty or thirty warriors with spears and pack animals. But they were a mile in advance, and did not look back as he rode, crouching low, over the flat ground towards the road.
A mile further across the plain, a vast number of crows were circling over a thicket of woods. Castus dropped down off the pony and secured the reins. He walked, legs numb. As he moved around the edge of the thicket the smell came to him, and his stomach tightened with dread. Dead flesh, old slaughter. Around the last tangled branches of the thicket, he saw the open ground beside the road, and the single stripped tree with its harvest of rotting heads.
He walked closer, feeling his empty guts beginning to heave. The heads were blackened, pecked and gouged by birds. But he made out the face of Culchianus, the features of Timotheus. Then he could look no more, and turned away with a low anguished groan. His shoulder buckled and he pressed his clenched fists to his head. Sickened anger boiled inside him, and a terrible wrenching despair that brought him close to tears. He forced himself to turn and look again, burn the terrible image into his mind. Remember this, he told himself.
Away from the road, he moved up into the reaching moorlands to the west. Across foot-sucking bogs and heather-covered hillsides, rushing streams and spills of dry scree, he traced his way southwards until he made out the overgrown ridge of the old wall of Antoninus. At the mouth of a valley beyond another slow stream, he saw the line of the ridge knot and curl, weathered stone showing through the grass and moss, and rode his pony through a gateway in the long-abandoned fortification.
A little further up the valley he came to a small settlement, just three humped huts with a wicker fence around a yard and some animal pens. The men in the yard did not look like Picts, and Castus kept his spear pointing to the ground as he rode closer.
They gathered at the gate as he approached, and a woman came out of the largest hut behind them. Castus halted, dismounted. The smell of woodsmoke and cooking food reached him. None of the people were armed, and they watched him warily. He considered how he must look to them: big and bruised, stubble-bearded, with fresh scars on his face and arms. He was riding a Pictish pony, and wearing a Pictish cape. It occurred to him that he could probably walk right in and take whatever he wanted, and they would not try to stop him.
He stuck the spear in the ground, trying to smile without baring his teeth. I don’t want to harm you, he wanted to tell them. I’ve killed about six men in the last few days, but I won’t kill you if you let me. He raised his hand and mimed eating, and the woman backed away and hurried inside the hut. One of the men opened the gate and gestured towards a log, worn by much sitting.
Castus eased himself down onto the log, keeping his eyes on the men until the woman returned with a wooden bowl of barley porridge and a cup of water; then he ate fast, unable to hold himself back. He grinned and nodded, and set the bowl down. Vast contentment washed through him. He heard the sounds of cattle, and for a moment remembered something from his childhood: the dairy behind his father’s workshop, and drinking warm milk from a ladle.
The woman pressed her palms together and laid the side of her head upon them. Sleep. She pointed towards one of the smaller huts with the question in her eyes. Evening was coming on, the light mellow and granular now, but Castus stood up and shook his head. He wished he had something to give in exchange for the food, and thought of Marcellinus’ seal ring, still concealed in the toe of his boot. But that would be worthless to them, and if any Roman ever found it they would suffer. He pressed his palm to his chest, over his heart, and backed away, and all of them smiled.
As he rode away up the valley he wondered who or what they must have taken him for. Doubtless they were glad to see him gone, but in his weakened state their simple frightened charity seemed a gift from the gods.
For another four days he pushed on southwards, taking his directions from the position of the sun, resting in thickets of trees with the spear lying beside him. Sometimes when he slept he dreamed of Cunomagla, and woke to imagine her musky scent around him, caught between angry desire and longing for her. At other times he saw the foul trophy tree in his dreams, and started awake in a sweat of terror.
Twice more he managed to beg food from isolated settlements; on his third attempt, men came running from the huts, shouting, with bows and javelins in their hands, and he rode clear before they got within range. After that he avoided human habitation. He found an orchard of wild apple trees, and devoured the small tough fruit ravenously.
On the third day he met a broad track that ran straight across the hills and the valleys, and recognised an old Roman road. He followed it on southwards, alert for warbands, and later that day he met the trail of the devastation.
From across the hill he smelled the burning, and rode warily until he could see the blackened walls of a village on the low bluffs above a river. Crows circled, but there was no triumph tree here. Was this a Roman settlement north of the Wall, Castus wondered, or had the inhabitants merely been loyal to Rome? The dead lay where they had fallen, hazed with fat black flies. Castus gazed at the corpses, their wounds black and clotted. Several days had passed since they died. There were no survivors, and the stink gripped him by the throat, and he retreated.
He rode on, more slowly now, expecting to see the warriors ahead of them. There were bodies beside the road in places, cut down in flight, men and horses left to rot. A few of the dead wore the tunics and breeches of Roman soldiers. Once Castus thought he saw a woman’s body with a dead child beside it, a bloodstained blanket thrown over them, but he passed on. A few miles further was the burnt ruin of another village, and he looked away from the charred black corpses strewn among the roofless huts.
Towards evening on the fourth day he crested a ridge and saw the wide river estuary and the salt marshes, and knew that he had arrived at the western coast. There was hard-packed gravel underfoot and the margins of the road were cleared of scrub, and then he saw before him the white line of the Wall of Hadrian drawn across the low landscape like a streak of chalk. In the far distance long trails of smoke rose, and Castus rode with gathering anticipation: he was almost home, almost within the boundary of the Roman domain.
Oblivious to all but the road and the gateway ahead, he did not hear the riders behind him until the hooves of their horses battered on the gravel of the road. Four of them, and two more charging up out of the woods ahead. Castus reined in the pony, canted the spear back overarm. There were too many of them – he would die, he realised. Icy shock held him immobile. Then as he opened his mouth to shout his last battle cry he saw the sun glinting off the riders’ helmets and mail, the emblems on their shields.
‘Wait!’ he tried to shout, but he had not spoken aloud in six days and his voice was a strangled gasp. The riders came on, spears levelled, faces glaring beneath the rims of their helmets. Castus threw down his own spear, raised his arms above his head, managed an inarticulate shout.
The horsemen drew up suddenly, kicking dust, and then circled with the spears pointing. Castus grinned, coughed, and found his voice.
‘I’m Roman! I’m a Roman soldier!’
Flavius Domitianus, Prefect of the Petriana Cavalry, was a large harried-looking man in late middle age. ‘They came upon us four days ago,’ he said, gazing out of the window towards the smoking ruins of the town of Luguvalium, half
a mile away behind the Wall. ‘The scouts reported a large mass of them moving down from the north-west, and I sent four squadrons out onto the road. They scattered ahead of us, but it was just a feint and the main body crossed the wall a mile or so east of here, then swam the river and circled round behind us. They fell on the town that evening. We managed to get most of the people back here into the fort, and cut the bridge behind us, but they burned the town. I’ve lost three hundred men, killed or missing. The gods know how many civilians are dead.’
They were sitting in an upstairs room of his headquarters, in the fort of Petrianis. Through the open window Castus could hear the familiar sounds of army life, but also the groans of wounded men, weeping women, the slow stir of despair. The relief he had felt at being surrounded by solid Roman walls again had not lasted long.
Domitianus lifted the cavalry sword from the table and weighed it in his palms. ‘Do you know, centurion, how many times in the last four days I’ve thought of falling on this blade, from shame?’
Castus remained silent. Only an hour had passed since the scouts brought him into the fort. He was tired and filthy and dazed, but Domitianus looked much worse. Grey stubble was dug into the prefect’s hollow cheeks, and his eyes were bloodshot and smudged.
‘Ten years I’ve commanded this fort! Ten years of patrolling, gathering taxes, supervising the natives, and never once a sniff at action. And when it comes – within six hours everything collapses around me! I’ve lost a third of my strength, the town’s burned and the enemy have slipped past me – and now I’ve got two thousand civilian refugees to look after.’
He slammed the sword back down on the table, the blade ringing. ‘It’s disgusting,’ he said. ‘But somebody’s got to command this mess.’ His voice choked off as he turned quickly back to the window. Castus could not tell whether Domitianus was more angry at the enemy, his own men, or himself. He sat silently at the table, drinking heated wine and eating bread and beef stew.
‘At least I managed to fire the message beacon before we were cut off,’ the prefect said grimly. ‘Since then I’ve been sending out patrols to scout along the roads and cut up any stragglers they can find. You were almost one of them, centurion. So what happened to you?’
Haltingly, Castus told him the story. It seemed an impossible tale now, and the further he got into it the harder it became to tell. He mentioned nothing of the death of Marcellinus, or the renegade, or Cunomagla.
‘And you got away and made it all the way back here?’ the prefect said, and grunted. Castus could not tell if the man believed him or not. ‘Well, you’d better get washed and get into some clean clothes, then I’ll see what I can do for you. My patrols have reported the roads clear to the south – it seems most of the enemy have moved off south-east, towards Eboracum. Hopefully our governor Arpagius will be dealing with them even now, if they get that far.’
‘You think they’ll just raid and then return north?’
‘You think not?’
Castus shook his head. ‘I think they’ll try for as much as they can.’
Domitianus touched his brow. ‘Pray to Jupiter they don’t get it,’ he said.
Bathed, shaved, rested and dressed in a clean white military tunic and grey breeches, Castus joined the prefect and two of his decurions for dinner later that evening. They ate sitting in the records room of the headquarters: Domitianus’s own rooms were being used by the curiales and wealthy families of the burnt town. It was a grim and subdued meal, and Castus said little but only listened. His own adventures north of the wall seemed of little interest to the men of the Petriana, compared with their own recent disasters.
‘I’m sending twenty of my men on a long reconnaissance tomorrow, to Brocavum,’ Domitianus said. ‘I need to check if the roads are clear. You can ride with them, and pick up another escort there. I’ll issue you with a horse to replace that barbarian pony thing you were riding, and you can collect a sword and anything else you need from the armoury. You can take four days’ marching rations too, which should be enough to get you to Eboracum. I can’t spare more.’
Castus thanked him.
‘Well then,’ the prefect concluded. ‘I’ll have the orderly show you to a bed. You leave at dawn.’
Two days later, Castus rode down off the high barren moors towards the rich farmland north of Eboracum. He was mounted in a proper saddle, on a broad-chested Roman cavalry horse, with a good Roman sword slung over his shoulder, and he had made good progress south from Petrianis and up across the high country. The weather had been foul across the moors, and the commander of the little fort up on the pass had refused him an escort.
‘As far as I’m concerned,’ the commander had said, gesturing out to the east, ‘all that country belongs to the enemy now. I’ve only got a hundred men here, and I have to hold this pass. If you want to go that way, you’re on your own.’
‘I have to go on,’ Castus had told him, leaning on the parapet above the eastern gate.
‘Well, the gods be with you. I’d keep off the roads if you can. We’ve had reports from deserters fleeing the Wall garrisons that the barbarians are swarming across the countryside unchecked. They’ve already plundered Cataractonium and they’re moving south. If I were you, brother, I’d stay here.’
But the morning was bright and clear and the road straight, and after five miles Castus reached an abandoned village and customs station at a river crossing. A little way further he turned off the road and headed southwards, following farm tracks and woodland trails. There had been no sign of the enemy for the last two days. The attack that had breached the Wall at Petrianis had swung left, rolling along the rear of the fortifications towards the rich settled lands to the south-east. After eight days in the saddle Castus was weary and sore, the motion of the horse beneath him a torment, but he pushed on, urging the animal to a canter whenever he found level ground and an open track. It would be a day or more before he reached Marcellinus’s villa, and another half-day to Eboracum.
The country was deserted here; the inhabitants must have fled to the hills in terror of the enemy. Castus did not blame them – it was illegal for private citizens to own or carry arms, so they would have had no way of defending themselves – but it felt eerie to find this settled country so empty. He skirted the silent villages and passed the shuttered farmhouses, riding slowly with sword in hand. But still there was no sign of the Picts – they must have kept their force together, aiming for larger targets.
He travelled more slowly after that, watching the trees and the fields, wary of ambush. It occurred to him that he had no idea how to find the villa without getting back onto the main road and retracing his steps to the turning. Evening was coming on when he reached a small village in a fold of a wooded river valley, houses of wood and stone and thatch around a large central tree with broad-spreading leaves. From one of the houses, vague in the dusk, Castus could make out a rising thread of hearth-smoke. He rode closer, sword in hand, watching the other buildings. The silent empty village was unnerving, and as the light faded the surrounding woods appeared ominous.
‘Hey!’ he called as he sat his horse beneath the tree. ‘Come out! I’m a Roman soldier.’
The door of the house opened a crack, then wider, and a woman stood on the threshold. She was old, around fifty, with a creased face and grey hair, but her back was straight and she stood proudly, almost defiant.
‘Thanks be to Brigantia Dea,’ the woman said. ‘Are you with the relief force?’
‘I’m not with anybody, I’m by myself.’ Castus glanced around at the other houses. All were closed up, no smoke rising.
‘They’ve all gone away,’ the old woman said coldly. Her voice was tightly clipped, her Latin fluent, with only the slightest taint of accent. ‘Off to the hills when they heard the news of the battle. I told them I wasn’t leaving – I won’t abandon my hearth and the shrines of my ancestors. Are you a deserter?’
‘No,’ Castus said. He eased himself down from the saddle and
stretched his aching legs. ‘I’m a centurion of the Sixth Legion. I’m trying to get back to Eboracum.’ A sudden weariness came over him, and he stretched his mouth in a yawn.
The old woman turned and called out to somebody inside the hut in the British language. ‘Come inside,’ she said. ‘The slave will see to your horse.’ A tangle-haired boy with a slack smiling mouth came from the house, took the reins and led the horse gently towards the drinking trough.
‘What battle?’ Castus asked, as he followed the woman through the door.
‘You haven’t heard? It was two days ago, outside Isurium. The barbarians fell upon a column of the Sixth and destroyed them utterly. They say two thousand men died, and the survivors fled back to the walls of Eboracum.’
Castus felt his head reeling. It was not possible… but the woman had spoken plainly and did not seem the sort to believe the stories of cowards and liars. For a moment he stood in the doorway, feeling the weight of the news sinking through him.
‘How far is Isurium from here?’
‘A good day’s walk. Only four or five hours for a horseman. But it’s too late for you to travel now, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
Numbed, Castus stepped inside the hut. A plain room, whitewashed walls and rushes on the floor, hearth at one end and a living space at the other, with curtained alcoves for sleeping. Neat and homelike, but he drew his sword and placed it on the table as he sat.
‘There’s no danger here, not now,’ the woman said quietly. At the hearth, a slave girl squatted in the ashes preparing a meal; she looked like the twin of the horse-boy outside. ‘My father was a soldier of the Sixth,’ the old woman said, ‘and my son serves with them now.’ A slight catch in her voice as she spoke. ‘Perhaps you know of him? His name is Valerius Varialus, of the Fifth Cohort.’