by Hall, Ian
Then he saw Calach’s distinctive figure, in the rear, his hair swept behind him, his eyes staring to the Roman shield wall.
The crash of a hundred horses hitting the wooden shields rang across the valley, men became dislodged from their mounts, falling over their heads, thrown by the sudden halt. Romans fell, but more ran to join the shield wall. The Norland riders in the second and third waves did little to help, merely pushing the men in front closer to the shields, giving them even less room to maneuver.
He watched as they fought, knowing there was nothing he could do to help. With the men jammed so closely together, Sewell knew the short stabbing Roman swords would be creating havoc against both horses and men.
~ ~ ~
Calach tried to urge his horse faster, Aysar riding at his side, but they now had three thousand men in front, and a clear way through to the fighting seemed impossible. Knowing his orders would not be heard over the cheers of the running men, he forced himself to watch as his father and the bravest men of the Caledonii clan struck the wall, their axes and swords circling in great arcs above their heads. Shields fell, some thrown into the air as the Roman warriors toppled. Two hundred mounted men, hacking at a shield wall, perhaps only one hundred men wide. Some horsemen slipped past the side, but archers near the Roman vanguard picked them off. The slow-moving, lightly armored horsemen were easy targets.
For a moment, it looked like the Roman wall would crumble, as they also were taking many arrows from the flanks, but a second wave of Romans raced to reinforce. Soon all holes in the wall seemed to be closed, the initial charge defeated. From his slightly elevated position, Calach could see Romans crouched behind the front line, their shields held over their heads, ready to sprint to holes in the wall. O make matters worse, the Romans in the reinforcing line were throwing their sharp-tipped javelins over their friend’s backs, straight into the Norlands horsemen.
They had reached a quick stalemate, and now the Romans held the advantage.
Calach’s battering rams arrived too late, and could not bring their rams into use because of the mounted clansmen in the way; it seemed to be a disaster. To Calach’s horror, more and more horses fell, one by one cut to the ground by the flashing, stabbing Roman swords slipping between the shields. To his dismay, Calach could not think of anything that would help the situation, his men directly in front were still pouring forward, but they would soon arrive in a swell of bodies, unable to go forward and yet at the mercy of the Roman bowmen who were starting to make hits amongst the clansmen.
Soon Calach could see that a good number of the men on horseback and their horses had already fallen.
Knowing that a swift retreat was his only option to save the situation, he looked to each side. “Sound the Carnyx!” Calach cried to Aysar, looking to the slopes of the glen. “Go!” he sent Aysar to the right, then rode to his left, soon finding a hornsman. “Sound the Carnyx! Sound the re-call!”
Soon, the low drone of the curved copper horns drifted above the carnage of battle. Calach watched with some pride as the men turned around and ran.
No cowardice, just following orders, just like they had practiced.
Surprisingly, the Roman line also retreated, shuffling backwards towards a narrower part of the valley floor, backing off to a more defensive position.
“Back to the rally point!” Calach roared as the men passing looked to him for instruction. “Form up again, this might not be over!”
Arrows from Calach’s archers on the valley slopes kept the Roman archers at bay for the front ranks to retreat without much harassment, and soon, the front ranks were riding past, their faces angry and resentful. He resisted the opportunity to berate their tactics.
He looked for Ranald, but could not see him. As the string of horsemen petered out, he looked at their faces, the realization dawning that he saw another emotion, that of guilt.
Then the last of the infantry passed him, limping, some clansmen helping others to remain upright, their wounds bloody and severe.
Calach followed the last man from the battlefield, stealing backward glances at the Roman line, but still they did not follow. Once they reached the rally point, Calach detected much less optimism than he had been prepared for. The mood of the men looked particularly dour.
“Calach,” Aysar’s voice sounded low. “We have news of your father.”
Calach found himself swallowing, his throat suddenly dry. “Speak,”
“He was cut down in the charge; he was one of the first men to fall.”
Calach watched as Aysar’s lip quivered, enough to reveal the hidden words behind his statement. “He is dead?”
“Aye,”
Despite the news, the gloomy faces around him seemed to give him strength. He took a deep breath, his eyes misting slightly. He felt his lip tremble, and bit on it lightly. “Aysar, find out what the Romans are doing. Now!”
His friend rode off without a word.
“Bruce?” Calach looked around to see the young man, his forehead bloodied but looking fit enough for action. “I want a count of the horses. How many are left?”
He turned to look down the glen focusing on Aysar’s retreating figure.
Ranald is dead. And I have to be the one to tell mother.
“The rest of you, defensive positions now!” he roared, his tears now flowing freely down his woad-smeared face. “Come on, get to it! We have a war to win!”
Bruce reported back first. Of the two hundred horsemen that Ranald had led, only eighty had returned.
You died in good company, old man. It’s just a pity that you died for nothing.
As he wiped his grief from his face, Aysar returned. “They’ve retreated a bit down the glen. But they’re now holding position.”
Calach sat upright on his saddle. “Wait here.” Spurring his horse onward, he retraced Aysar’s route, soon rounding the curve into the valley where he slowed the horse to a walk. In front lay the bodies of both Roman and Caledonii, horses and shields in a bloody tangle. The Roman wall now stood a good bowshot away, their faces staring at him silently over their shields.
I know where he was, right in the center.
Slowly he inched the horse forward, until he reached the jumble of bodies, some still moaning, twitching in pain. It only took a moment to find his father, his body cut, his belly open, his face frozen in death throes. His father’s friends, Masson and Durgal lay nearby, also well dead, their swords still clutched in their cold hands.
The breathing of his horse was the only sound he could hear.
Calach looked up at the distant Roman shield wall, looking for any signs of them advancing. Behind the wall, a Roman rode back and forth barking orders. Despite the distance between them, his eyes never left Calach’s.
Slowly the Caledonii dismounted, keeping the man’s gaze. He bent to lift Ranald’s body from the melee before him, and somehow pushed him over the saddle.
Suddenly he heard commands from the Roman line. The man who had watched him shouted excitedly from one side to the other. A dozen mounted men suddenly appeared from the left of the shield line, racing their mounts directly towards him.
Despite their approach, Calach calmly reached for his bow, slung behind the saddle. His face looked dispassionate, his resolve firm. He knocked his first arrow and fired, taking the lead rider’s horse in the chest. It tumbled below him, throwing the man forward, breaking his neck. Calach dispassionately fixed another arrow and aimed. He grinned as more arrows came from behind him, then tens more from the slopes of the valley, all descending on the small advancing group of Roman cavalry. Horses and men fell, until nothing moved on the valley floor.
Calach turned his horse, and walked away from the Roman line.
He had a father to bury, and a mother to break the news to.
~ ~ ~
Sewell knew the instant Ranald died. A shaft of light broke into the valley, and rested on the middle of the shield wall.
The destiny unwinds.
Sewell
gasped. The voice of Kheltine, the long dead dhruid filled his ears.
“It is your destiny to lead the clans Calach, but I cannot tell you how it comes to pass, only that it must surely do so. You must find some way of leading the clans yourself. Only by doing this can we be assured victory.”
Sewell sent a message to the other dhruids.
We leave. We return to Lochery.
~ ~ ~
With little hope of surprising the Roman army again, the Caledonii force made their way back to Lochery, a long circuitous route over crags and ridges which they knew a larger force could not follow. Two days later, when they neared the town, Calach rode ahead, determined to meet his mother to be first with the news.
But either she saw it on his face, or she’d received word by runner. When Calach approached the town, she was already on the rampart near the gate, her eyes red and swollen with crying, her face pale and tear-stained.
“Mother, I…” he attempted as he dismounted, running up to her.
She hushed his words and hugged him tighter than she ever had before, somehow crushing him with her frail arms. “There will be times for explanations soon,” she said, the words coming from below his chin, muffled in his tunic. “Times for stories of glory, stories of great lives coming to an end.” Suddenly she thrust him back, holding him by the arms. “But now is a time for Ranald, a time for a wake, an’ to bury a great chief.”
Once Ranald had been brought into the family broch, Mawrin and her friends washed Ranald’s body first in fresh river water, then in scented oils, and dressed him in his finest clothes, the ones he wore to impress.
Sewell stood in constant attendance, his cowl thrown back over his shoulders, his mouth mumbling, eyes watching every move the women made on the old man’s body.
Outside the main gate, a huge bonfire was built, which soon stood as high as any nearby tree, ready for the evening’s feast.
With nothing to do but dread the burial, and re-live the useless charge against the Roman wall, Calach walked around the town, an ale mug in his hand, and forced himself to drink slowly. In the space of a few days, the world had changed. Faces that had ignored him for years now stopped and bowed their heads slightly. Men shook his hand, calling him Lord, Chief, and Ard Righ. It all seemed so foreign to his ears.
When the time came for the procession to the prepared burial place, he found himself at the front, hardly taking in the details. Dhruids held burning torches which swayed as they walked. When the dhruids placed his body into the hole, Calach was only partly aware of it. As he looked around the faces lit by fire, he saw both sadness and hope, and it surprised him. While feeling numb himself, he allowed the mood of the clanspeople to lift him, and drag him out of the fog he seemed to be standing in.
Slowly his eyes filled with tears, and as the men laid the large flat stones over the shallow tomb. As he turned to see the circle of clanspeople, he suddenly realized that his mother, Mawrin, stood at their front.
“It is my right as matriarch!” she roared into the silence. “To choose the next chief of the clan Caledonii!” A huge cheer rang out, breaking the mood of the burial, moments before. Gradually, the crowd settled again, waiting on Mawrin’s next words. “I choose my son, Calach!”
For a moment, against every sinew of his being, Calach had doubt, then it dispersed as the words hit home and the crowd crushed forward, patting his back, shaking hands. Soon he found himself hoisted roughly onto shoulders, and carried triumphantly back to the town.
~ ~ ~
“How many times have you struck?” Calach asked Mauchty. The hills beyond Kin’res were growing darker as the sun set. With ten distinctly separate armies in the field, each taking their food and supplies from one particular clan area, it was difficult to get more than three or four of the commanders to meet at any one time. It was downright impossible to get all ten.
“We’ve managed to hit them three times: myself, Wesson, and Finlass.”
Calach nodded, scratching his chin. “Casualties?”
“More on their side, but they’re getting wary, not moving in as much of a line, flanking themselves as they march.”
“So they’re learning our tactics and adapting.” Calach said. “Then we have to change again.” A crescent moon had begun to rise from the east. “We have to surprise them again, send them reeling.” He looked at the Venicone’s face. “Have we ever combined the groups?”
Mauchty shook his head. “Not as far as I know.”
“We’d need a plan, a good one. And we need a target, easily hit, but easy to run away from.”
“They’re thin on the ground…” Mauchty paused, his eyes unfocused. “Maybe I’ve got it.”
“What?”
“There’s a Roman camp on the Bennarty hill, near Beath.” Mauchty began to smile. “We could all meet on the hill, everybody knows where it is.”
“So all we need it a proscribed day, or night.”
“Night would be best, when’s the empty moon?”
Calach tried to remember the particular phase. “In six days, I think.”
Mauchty shook his head. “That’s too soon, we don’t have enough time to get the word to everyone.”
“Oh I do,” Calach laughed. “Meet me on the hill in six days, the Caledonii at the very least will be there.”
Mauchty eyed him suspiciously. “How are you going to get the word out?”
“I have a plan.”
~ ~ ~
Calach crouched on one knee in the damp grass, almost half of his army now stood in darkness near the top of the rounded hill, ten thousand warriors, silent and ready. He had his small round shield on a strap over his back, his hands clenched sword and axe tightly. His torso was stripped bare, his only clothing were his trews; the patterns of his clan woven through the material. Although it was too dark for anyone to see, he had painted stripes of bright blue woad down his chest and back, intricate patterns of the same colour swept across his face and neck, his ‘killing face’. In groups, ten thousand other warriors waited, painted and garbed in similar fashion. Calach glanced to either side; his companions almost invisible in the darkness. He listened to the unnatural silence on the top of the hill; no insect noises, no bats flying overhead, the macrocosm’s reaction to the men and women crouched behind him; the largest Norlands fighting force ever to be assembled.
He watched the dark fort in front of him, waiting on the sentries to change, knowing the habits of the Romans inside, their military discipline now betraying them. Soon, new men appeared on the parapet, exchanged a few comments, then took over.
Calach moved slowly forward, hearing the swish of the grass as ten thousand followed his example, four groups, four commanders, all under his command. With the aid of spies on every side of the hill, Calach was certain that over five thousand Roman auxiliaries lay inside the fort before him. The assault on the fort would be a formidable task.
From his position, now less than a bowshot from the fort walls, Calach could see the heads and shoulders of the Roman sentries, walking their beats along the parapet wall. Four ditches had been gouged in front of the wall, but because of the rocky ground of the hilltop, they were shallow, and would be easily overcome.
Calach paused in his approach, and looked along the wooden slats hammered into the top of the bank of newly piled earth, the turf not yet growing on the slope. The gates were still their best chance of gaining the fort; twice as tall as a man, they looked flimsy; hastily erected.
Calach whispered to the two young warriors on either side of him.
“Four calls. Tell them to be ready.”
Without an answer, they silently crept off to tell the others.
Calach swallowed the lump in his throat; this would be their sternest test yet; a full assault on a legionary base. This would show the doubters in the clan that the Romans were not invincible.
He waited until he knew the messages would have been delivered to Mauchty, Ishar, Wesson, Cam’bel, all commanding separate detachments
of the Norlands force, all working under Calach’s command for the first time.
Next to Calach was the smallest group; led by Ishar, the Brigante. They held the large battering ram, wrought from a single pine tree the day before, carried on cross-poles by the strong southern warriors. The Brigante had insisted that his small force accompany Calach as the representatives of their tribe, needing vengeance for its own sake. Calach had delegated him to command the ram. The ram would gain the access to the camp.
Slowly, wanting to remember every moment, Calach brought his hands to his lips. A soft cooing noise issued from the Caledon chief, once, twice. He watched the guards on the parapet stop and look out towards him. Calach made the noise again.
At the last call, a rustle of arrows swooped straight for the sentries on the parapet, too many to miss their targets. The night’s silence was broken by the impact on armor, flesh and the wood of the parapet itself. Some sentries died silently, toppling forward over the wooden stakes, some died with loud ear-piercing shrieks, their bodies falling back into the encampment. Their primary targets gone, the archers aimed their bows higher, firing directly into the camp.
Calach rose to his feet, sensing the ripple of movement to his left and right as the rest of the warriors were doing likewise. He heard the groans as the men close to him lifted the heavy pine ram.
“Right Ishar, time for you Brigantes to do your stuff!” Calach could feel the determined smile in return.
Slowly at first, then gathering speed, the ramming party began to run straight toward the gates. Calach ran alongside, resolute in his mind to lead the army from the front. The rest of the force waited, giving the battering ram party time to reach the entrance. Even as he ran, he heard the noise of the warriors behind readying themselves for the charge, the unsheathing of weapons, the clatter of wood on steel. He heard the puffing of the men carrying the ram, their feet parting the long grass, thudding into the ground. When they had got halfway to the fort, he heard the seemingly deafening sound of thousands footfalls as the army began its charge, the arrows still flying overhead into the fort. As he ran, he heard the sounds inside the camp of an army being woken, some straight into death itself.