by Ian Ross
‘Slip down on the other side,’ Castus whispered, ‘but keep a tight grip on the saddle horn or you’ll be pulled under.’ Then he dropped into the water, and felt the cold striking into his chest. Marcellina gasped, and the horse kicked between them as it swam. Moonlight flooded through a rip in the clouds, and the river was suddenly bright, the spray glittering. Castus glanced back, and swallowed water, but saw only the blackness of the reaching willows and Marcellina’s hand pale on the saddle horn.
Then the horse rose as it reached the ground on the far bank, and Castus hauled himself across the saddle and pulled Marcellina up behind him again. Water streamed from them as the horse climbed the last distance from the river into the darkness beneath the trees. No sound came from the meadows beyond, no shout or flare of light. Castus reined in the horse, then turned to check that the girl was secure behind him. She was soaked, and beginning to shiver in the damp night breeze.
‘You ready?’ He saw her nod, the peak of her hood dipping. He nudged the horse forward again, out through the trees and across the low water meadow towards the fortress.
A mile, he thought, more or less. Some way to his left, north-east, was the line of the paved road that led directly to the gates. The temptation to goad the horse into a gallop was almost overpowering. Already Castus could see the growing paleness in the sky, the first suggestion of dawn. He kept his head down, the hood pulled over his face, and let the horse walk slowly forward. At a stand of trees he halted again, scanning the surrounding country as it emerged slowly from the night.
‘There are men behind us, in the meadow,’ Marcellina said in a tight whisper.
‘I’ve seen them.’ They were going down to the river on foot. Not a threat.
The horse stamped and snorted, shaking its head and tugging on the reins. The bridle clinked. Ahead of him Castus could make out the mass of the Pictish force camped in the open ground on either side of the road: bodies huddled in blankets or crude leaning shelters, fires still smoking from the night watch. Impossible to judge their numbers. Beyond them, in the far distance, the wall of the fortress showed as a pale line against the retreating darkness. There was not enough cover for a slow approach, unless along the riverbank, and then they would be easily trapped if anyone discovered them.
‘Hang on tight,’ Castus said. He felt Marcellina press herself against his back, her cheek against his shoulder, arms clasping his waist and fingers gripping his belt. He leaned forward over the horse’s mane, and dug his heels into the animal’s flanks.
For a few moments there was only galloping motion, the noise of the hooves dulled by the damp ground, and Castus heard the breeze rushing around his head and driving cold through his wet clothes. He looked up as a man rose from the darkness and then fell back with a cry. Castus kept the horse’s head straight and kicked wildly. He could hear shouts from all around, and he drew his sword and swung the flat of the blade back against the animal’s hindquarters. The charge seemed unstoppable, impossibly fast, straight through the Pictish encampment and out into the open ground beyond. When Castus looked again he saw that the light had grown and the encampment was gone, but the fortress wall was still far distant and now there were riders coming along the raised causeway of the road to his left.
He snatched a glance behind him: more pursuers, riding up from the riverbank, legs splayed from their galloping ponies, spears raised, shouting. Marcellina’s cape had slipped from her shoulders, and her hair streamed out wet and dark. The horse leaped a muddy ditch, and the jolt as it landed almost threw Castus from the saddle. He screwed the reins around, angling sideways, towards the road. There was no point in caution or concealment now.
Up on the causeway, the horse swerved and skidded on the gravel. Staggering, it charged forward again. The gate was dead ahead now, and Castus could see the watchfires burning between the crenellations. The noise of the hooves on the paved road was thunderous, but the Pictish riders were only a few paces behind. Castus heard Marcellina scream loud in his ear, and a javelin flashed past his shoulder and clattered against the road ahead. The powerful cavalry horse could outdistance the smaller Pictish ponies, but there were other riders ahead, angling up from the river to cut him off.
Castus raised his sword, yelling furiously across the horse’s bent mane. The leading rider was coming up the causeway, raising his spear; he threw, but the missile fell short. The horse charged closer. To hang back now, Castus knew, would mean encirclement and death.
Suddenly the rider was beside him, swinging with his sword. Castus parried the blow, kicked out with his leg, and the pony reared back. Then they were through, and the road was open right up to the gates. Teeth clenched, back arched, Castus drove the horse onwards – only a few hundred paces remained.
Figures were moving up on the wall, shouts echoing out into the damp dawn air, then a harsh ratcheting noise. A loud sudden snap, and Castus glanced up just in time to see the jerk of the released catapult arms. He threw himself forward, and the yard-long iron-tipped ballista bolt cut the air just above his head.
‘Don’t shoot!’ he yelled. ‘We’re Roman! I’m a Roman soldier!’ But his voice was lost in the rush of the wind, the roaring of his blood, the noise of the hooves.
Another ratcheting click, another snap. Veering left and right, Castus saw a second bolt flicker past and spike the road behind him. He stretched himself up, hood thrown back, yelling to the men on the wall. Fifty paces from the gate – the bolts could not miss now – but he did not slow down.
He heard a scream from away behind him, and turned his head. A laugh burst from his throat: one of the pursuing Picts was stretched on the road, his pony capering away. The artillerymen had realised their mistake at last and adjusted their aim.
Now he saw the great gates cracking apart and slowly drawing open, armed men rushing over the threshold. The horse gave a last surge of strength, in under the shadow of the walls. Then the stone arches were above them, and Castus heard the welcome voices of soldiers around him.
Through the echoing stone-paved tunnel beneath the gate, he slowed the horse to a walk and then to a halt. The animal was soaked in sweat, shuddering and tossing its head. Castus dismounted, and then helped Marcellina down. He turned to confront a ring of shields and levelled spears.
‘Who are you?’ demanded a face from beneath a helmet rim. Castus could not stop grinning. The ground felt loose and unstable beneath his feet.
‘Aurelius Castus,’ he gasped. ‘Centurion, Third Cohort, Sixth Legion.’
‘Is this woman a prisoner?’ Two of the soldiers were leading Marcellina aside by the arms. She stared back at Castus, breathless and confused.
‘No… no, she’s the domina Aelia Marcellina, daughter of Aelius Marcellinus, envoy…’
The circle of men broke, and Castus saw an officer, a tribune. He did not recognise the man. A cold shivering sensation rose from his gut.
‘Where have you come from?’ the tribune said in a low hard voice. Castus told him – the north, Pictland – but he was stammering the words, exhaustion fighting through the energy in his blood.
‘You’re under arrest, centurion,’ the tribune said. ‘Surrender your belts and weapon.’
Two soldiers seized his arms. Castus stood passively for a moment, baffled. Then he shrugged the soldiers roughly away from him.
‘Arrest? On what charge?’
‘Desertion in the face of the enemy,’ the tribune said. ‘The penalty is death. Take him away!’
14
‘Over forty days ago,’ the governor said, ‘you left this fortress in command of a century of men, with orders to escort an envoy and my secretary into Pictland. Now you return and tell me that all these men are dead and you alone have survived. In the meantime, the Picts have crossed the Wall, devastated my province, defeated my legion in the field and surrounded my capital. It doesn’t look good, does it?’
‘No, dominus,’ Castus said. He was standing at attention, tunic unbelted, still bloody and
unshaven after three days in the guardhouse.
Aurelius Arpagius, governor of the province and prefect of the legion, paced across the mosaic floor of his private chamber in the headquarters building. His beard, once so neatly groomed, was now wild and ragged. His eyes were sunken, and his dark skin had a yellowish tinge from lack of sleep.
‘Do you know how many deserters have flooded into this fortress in recent days?’ he asked. ‘Half the Wall garrison fled when the enemy first raised their heads above the horizon! My troops at Isurium broke after the first engagement! Panic, centurion, is eating through this whole province. It must be stopped – discipline must be restored. That’s why I’ve ordered the arrest of any further deserters who come through the gates. And that’s why I’ve ordered the execution by stoning of any officer, centurion or above, found to have deserted his command.’
Castus nodded. He had already given his report, in as simple and soldierly manner as he knew how. He had told Arpagius almost everything about what had happened: the Pictish muster, the capture of Marcellinus and Strabo, the defence of the hilltop fort. He had told him of his own surrender and imprisonment, Strabo’s murder, their captivity and Marcellinus’s death, his escape. All he had left out was the involvement of Cunomagla; he remembered his promise, but this was not the moment to mention her.
‘Your duties,’ the governor said, ‘were to protect the envoy and the safety of your men. You have failed utterly in both. Understand?’
‘Yes, dominus.’
‘But… bearing in mind the circumstances, I am prepared to suspend the sentence of death for the time being. You will remain under arrest and confined to quarters until I have time to decide whether you should be discharged without honour or reduced to the ranks…’
Castus kept his shoulders straight, his chest out, but anger was boiling inside him and he could feel his face reddening. He could hear the scratching of the clerk’s stylus on the wax tablet. The soldiers at the door were already pacing forward to lead him away.
‘Dominus!’ he said, tight-throated. Arpagius glanced up at him sharply. ‘Dominus… the Roman renegade I mentioned…’
‘Yes?’ The governor’s eyes narrowed, and his face grew still. ‘You put the man to death, you said?’
‘I did. But before he died, he told me… certain things.’
A long pause. The tribune Victorinus, perched at the end of the couch, looked at the governor and raised his eyebrows. The clerk paused in his writing. Then they all looked at Castus.
‘Things?’ Arpagius said. He cleared his throat quietly. ‘Victorinus, Proclinus, leave us and take the guards with you.’
The tribune and the clerk stood up, saluted, and then paced out of the room. The guards closed the door behind them. Arpagius circled the desk and leaned back against it. The governor was a head shorter than him, but Castus felt the searching pressure of the man’s gaze.
‘So – tell me,’ Arpagius said quietly.
‘Dominus, the renegade and traitor Julius Decentius claimed that he had been acting under imperial orders to raise a rebellion among the Picts. He claimed that he was receiving instructions from an imperial agent in the province, who had come from Treveris, and had promised him a pardon for his crimes. He said… that my men and I had been sacrificed by our superiors.’
Arpagius was silent for a long time. He tugged at his beard, and Castus noticed that the man’s forehead was beaded with sweat.
‘Did you believe him?’
‘Dominus… it’s not for me to believe or disbelieve. I can only report what he said to me.’
‘Well, I know nothing of it. The words of a renegade – a man you describe as a traitor? A man trying desperately to talk his way out of a just execution…? It seems to me this sort of man would invent any plausible excuse, no?’
Castus looked directly at the governor for the first time. ‘I would have killed him anyway. He knew that.’
The governor held his gaze, the silence bristling between them, and Castus felt the anger rising in him again.
‘Who have you told about this? Anyone?’
‘No, dominus.’
‘What about that girl you brought in with you. Marcellinus’s daughter. Did you mention this to her?’
‘I did not.’
‘Good… I’ve got twenty thousand civilians sheltering in this fortress, centurion. The last thing I want is for evil rumours to start circulating amongst them. The same goes for the troops, of course. I would strongly advise you to say nothing of what this renegade told you to anybody. Is that clear?’
‘Quite clear, dominus.’
‘When I received warning of the enemy attack on the northern forts,’ Arpagius went on, pacing back to the couch and sitting down, ‘I at once sent an urgent message to the Augustus Constantius in Gaul. As we speak, he is assembling a field force and preparing a rapid march to relieve us. When he gets here… I will perhaps raise the matter with his staff. Meanwhile, I order you to put it out of your mind. Do you understand?’
‘I understand, dominus.’
‘Good. As far as you or I are concerned, whatever happens beyond the Wall stays there.’
Strong hands gripped and lifted him, and he fought against them, still lost in the fevered dreams of grief. In his mind he saw again the grisly tree, and he thought the voices were Timotheus and Vincentius, calling to him from the far side of death.
‘Easy, brother, easy now,’ one of them said. The hands were dragging him up off the cold flagstone floor. He lashed out, but somebody caught his wrist and held tight.
‘How long’s he been like this?’
‘Two days, centurion,’ said another voice. Castus knew this one: the thin-necked youth with a frightened stare who had been set as sentry outside his door. Castus had never seen him before. The other speaker was his friend Valens.
‘Get him up, careful now. By the gods, he must weigh twice what I do!’
The world swung, and Castus let himself swing with it. His head reeled with the fumes of the wine; his mouth was dry with the taste of it, and his eyes felt gummed shut. He had never drunk to excess before – that was his father’s weakness.
A bolt of cold water struck him in the face, splashing down his chest, and he gasped and cried out as he opened his eyes. Valens and two guards stood before him. Castus aimed a kick at the man with the bucket, but missed. His head was screaming and his hands ached.
‘Look what he’s done to the wall!’ the sentry said. Above the bed Castus could see the plaster cracked and broken to the brickwork. That explained his battered fists, he thought. The painful grazes on the forehead too. Between them the guards dragged him up to sit on the bed and gave him water. He gulped back three large cups of it.
Officially, he remembered, he had been forbidden to leave his quarters, but he had been granted a trip to the baths and to the hospital to have his wounds dressed. Then they just gave him a big clay jug of wine and left him to it. How long had he spent like this, drunkenly raging or sprawled on the floor? He could no longer properly account for the time that had passed, nor did he want to remember.
Valens ordered the other men out, kicked a stool over to the open window and sat down on it. ‘You look disgraceful, brother,’ he said. ‘Still, you should be grateful you were out of this. It hasn’t been warming to the heart, these last ten days.’
Castus had not seen his friend since returning to the fortress. Valens looked as worn down as everyone else in Eboracum, his expression soured with a mixture of anger, fear and shame at what had happened.
‘Arpagius even neglected to tear down the scaffolding where we’d been repairing the walls,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘The Picts made a rush at it when they first got here – almost got inside too. We had to burn it ourselves in the end to keep them back. It was chaos – half the centurions and tribunes dead or missing after the battle, refugees pouring in. The enemy destroyed all the buildings along the river – they even burned the Blue House! But don’t worry, everyon
e escaped, except that old eunuch doorkeeper – the Picts killed him. And since then we’ve been stuck in here and they’ve been out there.’
‘What happened at Isurium?’ Castus asked, squinting against the light from the window, the thunder and flashes of lightning in his head. He had been unable to find anyone willing to tell him about the defeat.
‘Bloody shambles,’ Valens said, worrying at a stalk of grass with his teeth. ‘The enemy had us flanked before we’d even deployed from line of march. Arpagius ordered us to form square, but the baggage train was still spread out along the road and the Picts fell on it before we could form up. Everyone giving different orders. No discipline. The First and Sixth Cohorts managed to put up a fight and withdrew intact, but for the rest of us it was just a rout. Balbinus and Galleo died. Ursicinus saw his battle at last, after forty years of service. Last thing he’ll ever see. I don’t mourn them exactly, but… The legion’s in rags, brother.’
From outside came the sound of horns, and then the shout and stamp of the watch being changed. The usual female screechings from the married quarters at the end of the barracks. Most of the women would be widows now. Castus felt a roll of nausea in his gut; he was glad he had managed to avoid facing them.
‘There’ll be a forced conscription levy on the civilians,’ Valens went on with a weary sigh, ‘and we’ll enlist any of the men who retreated from the Wall garrison that don’t have standing cohorts left. But it’ll be months before we can take the field again.’ He swabbed at his brow, and then smiled ruefully. ‘And what about you?’ he asked. ‘Adventuring in Pictland? Picking up stray women?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Castus said, more sharply that he had intended.
Valens’s smile slipped. He gripped Castus by the shoulder. ‘Sorry, brother,’ he said quietly. ‘At least we’re alive, though. Thanks be to the gods.’
Castus nodded, and planted his thumb and finger upon his brow.
‘Valens,’ he said as his friend turned to go. ‘The woman who came in with me. Aelia Marcellina. Do you know what happened to her?’