The War at the Edge of the World

by Ian Ross

  ‘Coward,’ Castus told him. ‘You’d only attack me if my back was turned.’

  Placidus let his sword drop, already edging away. ‘We can settle this later,’ he said, and gave a strained laugh. ‘I want to get that barbarian bitch’s head first!’

  He turned and jogged towards the next hut. Cursing, Castus went after him. He was limping now, and Placidus was already at the hut door before Castus could catch up with him. The soldier took a step back, and kicked. Wood cracked; the door burst open.

  A flung spear darted from the low opening and spitted Placidus through the throat.

  For a moment the man stood with the spear through his neck. He made a wet coughing sound, and his knees buckled. He dropped heavily.

  Castus limped towards the open doorway. A Pictish shield was lying on the ground, and he stooped and picked it up, holding it before him. Time slowed, the noise of the rout behind him fading in his ears. Carefully he stepped across Placidus’s quivering corpse. Then he threw himself forward through the door of the hut.

  The interior smelled of burning pitch and fresh blood. Two dead warriors on the floor, two flaming torches in the firepit. At the far side, half in shadow, Cunomagla stood with a heavy boar-spear raised to strike. Castus stepped to one side and got his back against the doorframe, the Pictish shield held up before him. Cunomagla’s face hardened as she recognised him.

  ‘You come back,’ she said. ‘Your gods are kind to you.’

  Castus saw the boy, her son, clasped behind her. He watched the head of the spear, watched the woman’s eyes.

  ‘These your guards?’ he said, motioning with his sword towards the dead men beside the firepit. Cunomagla did not shift her gaze.

  ‘Drustagnus’s men,’ she said, gripping the spear firmly. ‘He sent them to kill us, when he knew the fort would fall. But I was stronger than they.’

  He could close with her in three strides, across the firepit and in under the reach of her spear. Castus tried to judge the angle, tried to guess his chances of catching the spear blow on the small shield he was carrying. But, yes, he thought, she was strong. And he was weakened by wounds, exhausted from the fight. Then there was the boy – even if he had only a knife, he could still be dangerous.

  ‘You planned all this?’ he said. ‘The war. It was… your intention?’

  Cunomagla smiled coldly, shaking her head. Her hair was dark bronze in the flickering light of the torches. ‘No. I found out what happened after Drustagnus and your renegade murdered my husband, but then it was too late. So, I must follow fate’s direction. Sometimes the gods sleep, and men make mistakes. When they wake we are punished.’

  From the smoky compound outside Castus could hear his men calling to one another. Modestus’s voice. They were getting closer.

  ‘But now my son will be king,’ Cunomagla said, and her arm tightened as she gripped the spear.

  ‘If he lives.’

  Three strides, Castus thought. Block the spear and charge into her, knock her down. He willed his body to move, but could not.

  ‘Put down the weapon,’ he said.

  ‘You want to take me alive? Make a trophy of me, for your emperor? No.’ The boy peered out from behind her, wide-eyed but defiant. ‘So what will you do?’ she asked. ‘Kill me?’

  ‘Once my men get here, I’ll have to. Those are my orders.’

  ‘And you Romans always follow your orders, yes?’

  Castus heard a thud from above him: a burning torch tossed onto the thatch. Smoke was filling the interior of the hut.

  ‘I gave you a knife once,’ Cunomagla said.

  ‘You did that.’

  He took three breaths, trying not to cough. Her eyes held him, the spearhead unwavering. Then he lowered the shield and rolled his shoulder against the doorframe. As he ducked his head through the doorway he was tensing, expecting the bite of the iron spear in his spine. Out through the door, he stood up and stepped across Placidus’s body. Three paces, then four. He tried to ease his shoulders out of their hunch.

  ‘Nothing in there,’ he called to Modestus. ‘Move up to the next huts. Go!’

  Diogenes came up beside him, with two canteens swinging from his shoulder. Castus took one of them and drank deeply, gulping the water down; then he poured the canteen over his head and washed the blood from his scalp and face. When he looked back towards the hut, the thatch was burning. No movement from inside.

  ‘It’s like the inferno of the Christians!’ Diogenes said. Smoke all around them, fires and contorted bodies in the shadows. Castus nodded, washing the gore from his sword. He wiped the blade on the hem of his tunic and rammed it back into the scabbard. Pacing heavily, he crossed the compound. He felt nothing now, just a spreading numbness. No sense of time or place. But he realised the fear that had been eating away at him for months now: the thought that Cunomagla might have had a child by him. She had not. He was glad of that at least.

  After a while he heard the shouts from the lower fort, and gazed into the reeling smoke. Cavalry, they’ve got cavalry!

  Noise of neighing horses, beating hooves. Castus jerked into motion, snatching up a fallen javelin as he ran. The upper fort was clear now, but when he reached the ramparts he saw wild motion from the enclosure below. He ran along the wall and found a place where the palisades had been torn down.

  Ponies were charging between the burning huts, released from some corral or pen at the far end of the lower fort. The soldiers who had scattered in terror were regrouping now, pulling back from the huts, readying spears. Then, as Castus stood on the wall with the javelin raised, he saw a figure ride out into the cleared space before the lower rampart. It was Cunomagla, riding bareback with her son seated in front her, brandishing the heavy spear over her head. He saw her strike down a fleeing soldier, and then drag back on the reins to turn the pony before the rampart.

  ‘Throw!’ somebody shouted. ‘Kill her!’

  Soldiers were closing in from all sides, shields up. In the ring of men Cunomagla turned the pony again, but there was no way out. For a moment she glanced up and saw Castus standing on the wall above her with his javelin aimed. She raised her spear in salute, and he saw her grinning in wild triumph.

  Then she hauled on the reins again, kicking at the pony’s flanks and charging it at the rampart. The palisades were gone, burned or broken, and beyond was only empty blackness. With a leap the pony was up onto the wall, Cunomagla turning to scream back at the soldiers; then she kicked again and the animal bolted forward, across the ruined palisade into the black gulf beyond.

  For a heartbeat Castus saw her in the glow of the fires, her hair bright against the darkness. Then she fell and was gone. The soldiers surged after her, dashing up into the breach and pelting spears and javelins down into the night.

  ‘Why didn’t you throw?’ The same voice. Castus turned on his heel. Three paces away, the notary Nigrinus stood on the brink of the wall. He must have entered the fort with the first wave from the gates. Castus tightened his grip on the javelin, still holding it raised above his head, and for a moment the notary stared back at him, face blank with surprise. Then Castus eased his arm down, until the javelin head clinked on the stones of the wall.

  Nigrinus smiled, raising an eyebrow. ‘I think you missed your moment, centurion,’ he said. Castus heard the crackle of the burning huts once more, the shouts and screams. He stepped down off the wall, and Nigrinus followed him.

  ‘Well, she won’t get very far,’ the notary said, apparently quite calm now. ‘If the fall didn’t kill her, our troops outside the fort soon will. No matter… Did you find the other chief? Drustagnus?’

  ‘I found him and I killed him,’ Castus said without looking back.

  ‘You did? Excellent! I’ll mention it to my superiors and see you’re rewarded.’ Nigrinus was pacing close beside him. ‘The slaughter here has been quite satisfactory. There’s little chance these people will dare raise their heads against us again. I think,’ he said, turning to address Castus directly
, ‘we might consider your debt paid in full. You have a rare talent for survival, it appears. But I’m sure if we never encounter each other again, we will both be pleased.’

  ‘May the gods send us luck, then.’

  ‘Now, tell me,’ the notary said with sudden urgency, ‘which of these huts was the home of the renegade, Decentius?’

  Castus shrugged, scanning the fort enclosure. Away to his left, he saw the hut in which he had been held captive.

  ‘That one.’

  Nigrinus nodded and strode off without another word. Castus watched him go, until a swirl of smoke blotted the man out.

  The notary would not find what he was looking for: the fire was spreading between the huts, and he would not have the chance to search more than one. Whatever compromising documents, whatever evidence of complicity the renegade might have left behind him would soon be lost to the flames. They were all the same, Castus thought. Nigrinus and Decentius, Drustagnus and Cunomagla. Even the emperor himself. All of them with their plans and schemes, all of them groping about in the shadowy mazes of conspiracy. If some lost and others won, what did it matter? It was the soldiers who paid in blood, the soldiers and the warriors, the civilians struck down and butchered in their thousands, the burnt homes and crops, the despoiled land.

  The gods help us, Castus thought to himself. He could feel a strange punchy feeling rising from his chest, a quivering of nervous energy. Everything suddenly seemed absurd, hilarious. He threw back his head and laughed – laughed out loud until his eyes streamed. Pacing back towards the gateway, he was gulping air as the laughter heaved out of him.

  The emperor had got what he wanted at least: a victorious war, far from the controlling influence of his imperial colleagues. And an army, welded to his cause by battle. To the cause of his son too.

  And it was glorious, Castus told himself as he gasped for breath. This was what glory truly looked like: the corpses stacked in heaps, the fire and the slaughter. But he had survived. He had triumphed. The thought of that started him laughing again.

  Over by the gateway the dead were lying thick. Castus saw one of them sprawled across his path, hardly more than a boy, fourteen or fifteen, with a sword still locked in his grip. He stepped across the body, waving to Valens and the others by the gate.

  ‘Centurion…’ Diogenes said, and then his eyes widened in sudden shock.

  Castus jolted back into awareness, glancing around. He saw Valens take two running steps towards him, raising his sword.

  ‘What…?’ he said, startled. ‘No… You?’

  Then something hard and very heavy struck the back of his head and his legs were gone from beneath him. He was on the ground, hot blood gushing over his face. Shouts of rage, a scream.

  ‘Little bastard was playing dead!’

  Valens was standing over him. Castus tried to heave himself up, but the blood was pouring onto the ground beneath him.

  ‘Well, he’s dead for sure now…’ he heard Valens say.

  He opened his mouth, and it filled with blood. Then the tide of pain rushed over him, and he was lost beneath it.

  22

  ‘So, it looks like you’re alive after all then.’

  Castus opened his eyes with difficulty. The sunlight drove nails into the back of his skull. He was lying on his back, with a ceiling of tent leather above him, and Valens was sitting beside the bed on a folding stool, eating walnuts.

  ‘You’ve been looking very like a corpse for a long time now, brother! We were about to break into the funeral fund on your behalf.’

  ‘How long?’ Castus managed to say. The words ground in his throat like boulders in a rushing stream.

  ‘Ah, talking too now! Well, it’s been over twenty days since you showed any signs of intelligence. Mind you, in your case that’s a relative thing.’

  Castus raised his top lip, but every movement of his face filled his head with fire. He resigned himself to enduring Valens’s wit.

  ‘Good thing you’ve got such a great solid head, though,’ Valens went on, cracking nuts in his palm. ‘Otherwise that Pictish lad would’ve taken the top of your skull off. As it is, you’ve just got a nice new scar to add to your collection. Shame, though – it’s at the back. Everyone’ll think you got it while you were running away! Ha ha!’

  Rolling his neck slightly, Castus could feel the thick linen bound all around his head. When he closed his eyes he felt a plunging sensation, a rush of distorted memories. He had woken from a long aching dream: flames and smoke, thunderous noise, then lost muffled silence.

  ‘Don’t worry, though, you’ve got a good doctor looking after you. A freedman of the imperial household, sent by the emperor. He’s been feeding you some Greek medicinal slop to dull the pain, so you’re probably not feeling much.’

  ‘What happened… after?’

  ‘After the fight? Oh, you didn’t miss anything good. We destroyed the fort and then marched up country for six days – you were slung in a baggage cart, but the rest of us had to walk. We got to the sea, built an altar to Neptune and sacrificed in thanks for a successful campaign, then turned around and headed back south. We’re at Bremenium now, a day north of the Wall.’

  The noise of the cracking walnuts was very loud, aching in Castus’s ears. But Valens had a sober look on his face now, and he was leaning forward to speak more quietly.

  ‘The emperor’s sick. Worse, I mean. That doctor who’s been treating you says there’s some evil matter in his bowels, eating him from the inside. They’ve known about it for over a year, but there’s no cure. And now he’s approaching the last crisis. That was the phrase the doctor used anyway.’

  Castus lay still for a while, digesting the news. It was noth­ing unexpected, he decided. When he opened his eyes he was surprised to see Valens still there.

  ‘What about the Pict woman?’ he asked, struggling to form the words. ‘The one who jumped the rampart?’

  ‘Oh, her? No idea. I didn’t see it myself, but those idiots from the Eighth were saying it was magic. They didn’t find any trace of her outside the wall anyway, so maybe she just vanished into the air! Or more likely made off to some dirty little cave in the mountains to hide out with her brat till we’re gone. Rumour is she was a powerful witch, and beguiled men to do her bidding. Any ideas about that?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Ah, well. She won’t be troubling us again…’

  Castus tried not to smile. Valens was getting up now, tossing aside his handful of nutshells. He paused, and then came back to stand beside the bed.

  ‘Another thing,’ he said, lifting a bundle from the floor. ‘You may as well have this, now that you’re alive again.’

  Valens unwrapped the bundle, and placed something on Castus’s chest.

  ‘Awarded for valour, by order of the emperor. First over the enemy wall, and slew their chief in single combat, so they say. In the ancient days of glory you’d have won a golden crown and a lifetime’s honour for it, but now you must be content with that bauble and double rations. Tribune Constantine presented it, and our mule-faced Victorinus accepted it on your behalf, since you looked so dead. Constantine says to tell you: Don’t lose it this time.’

  His friend left, the tent flap swinging shut behind him, and Castus lay in silence with his hands clasping the twisted ring of a gold torque.

  A wet night in Eboracum, and in the fortress of the Sixth Legion the paved courtyard of the headquarters building was packed with men. Torches guttered in the mist, threading smoke through the massed soldiers and painting the wet stone of the porticos and the hulking legion basilica with a moving glow. There were men of all units, the Sixth and the other legion detachments, cavalrymen of the Mauri and Dalmatae, wild tribesmen of the Alamanni. All of them drawn by some uncanny impulse, some current of rumour and dread. Inside the basilica, in the shrine of the standards beneath the busts of ancient deified emperors and the great statue of Victory, the Augustus Flavius Constantius was dying.

  Shouldering his way
through the crowd at the gate, Castus pushed on through the throng filling the courtyard, Valens and Diogenes a few others close behind him. His head was still bandaged, and a sick dizziness still numbed his limbs, but he felt the strange energy of the gathering urging him forward. Men glanced back at him as he worked his bulk between them. Nobody knew what would happen. The air was charged with fear, anticipation, excitement, like the mood before a riot or a battle.

  He reached the tall pillared entrance of the basilica, and saw the doorway blocked by Praetorians with locked shields, Protectores stationed behind them gripping the hilts of their swords. Castus looked back at the sea of men behind him, faces upturned beneath caps and helmets. Ripples of motion ran through the crowd, like shivers, although the night was warm. Here and there fights broke out, quickly quelled. Men shoved and jostled; others climbed up on the portico roofs.

  Beside him, Castus saw Valens scrambling up onto the base of a pillar. The noise of the crowd was growing. He shuffled backwards until he felt one of the other pillars behind him, and then eased his swordbelt around and slipped the weapon up under his armpit where he could draw it quickly.

  Now a great sigh came from the crowd, and they shifted forward. Castus leaned, peering upwards, and saw that a little fat man had appeared in one of the high arches of the basilica. The fat man raised his arms as the officers yelled for silence. The roar of voices died into a deep hush.

  ‘Fellow soldiers!’ the little man called out in a high cracked voice. It was the eunuch, Castus realised, who had been in the tent with the dead Pictish chiefs after the battle. A few harsh laughs came from the crowd.

  ‘Fellow soldiers,’ the eunuch cried again, raising his arms to the sky. ‘The sacred soul of our emperor has ascended to the heavens!’

  A vast moan came from the assembled men. A mass of booted feet scraped the paving stones. Some of the men at the back of crowd had already started shouting. The eunuch’s voice rose to a high wail.

  ‘Our beloved Augustus… Flavius… Valerius… Constantius… has lived!’