The bushes rustled and out of the woods came a rider on a shaggy pony, a Selgovian horseman, who halted outside the village gate. This far away Flaminius couldn’t work out if it was Carbantovolcos or another man. The rider put a horn to his lips and blew a booming blast, followed by a second one.
‘That’s the signal,’ said Probus, coming up to join Flaminius. ‘We follow.’ He mounted his horse.
The Selgovian galloped away into the trees. Flaminius and the auxiliaries mounted and rode after Probus. He glanced back to see Drustica’s mournful face as she stood solitary in the gateway of the village. Then they had entered the woods, and the village vanished from his sight.
‘Follow in closer formation,’ Probus ordered as they rode through the dripping eaves. ‘Remain vigilant but don’t attack unless they attack first. This is a diplomatic mission.’
The Selgovian rider was visible far ahead, vanishing at times into the pools of shadow that spread beneath the trees. Things grew darker the further they climbed up the hillside. Now birches and beeches were replaced by towering pines. Needles littered the forest floor, which continued to slope upwards. Through a gap in the trees, Flaminius saw a bird flying over. It looked like an eagle.
They crossed over the hills with the Selgovian rider ever ahead of them. By now they must be in his own tribal territory. Glancing left and right, Flaminius began to see figures among the trees trailing them, some on ponies, others on foot.
They were being followed.
Crossing a ridge, they saw a wooded glen open up far below them, with a river rushing through boggy meadows. On the far side the slope rose until it reached a series of parapets lined with palisades. It was far away, but Flaminius could not see any armoured figures patrolling. Behind the hill fort, three wooded peaks stood proud against the skyline.
Talking to Probus as they proceeded, Flaminius had learnt that according to earlier intelligence, the Selgovian territory consisted of four towns, or hill forts, Trimontium, Carbantorigum, Corda, and Uxellum. He gathered that they had reached the proximity of Trimontium, the capital.
Hoofs drummed among the trees and out galloped a troop of Selgovian riders who headed toward the auxiliaries. They wore plumed helmets and chainmail cuirasses, carried oblong shields and long lances. The rider who they had been following spoke with the Selgovian chief. Then the other riders fanned out to surround the auxiliaries and escort them onwards and downwards towards the hill fort.
They rode along a track that passed through fields of oats and barley. Flaminius saw pig pens, and herds of cattle and goats in fields of grass as they crossed the river and entered the vicinity of the hill fort. Farm workers looked up from their labours as the warriors escorted the Roman auxiliaries onwards. A man with a cart stood to one side of the track, glowering resentfully as the riders passed. As they drew closer to a village that lay at the foot of the hill, Flaminius saw barns and a mill where slaves trudged round and round, grinding grain.
It turned out that the hill fort itself was no longer in use, having been sacked by the Romans back in Agricola’s day. Flaminius also saw, to one side, the charred and broken down wooden walls of the old Roman camp, apparently torched in reprisal at some more recent point, but the Selgovian riders urged them on before he could investigate it any further.
The village gates stood open and men waited at either side as the riders rode in, Selgovae at the front, more at the back, Flaminius and the auxiliaries in the middle as they passed through the palisade. Skulls grinned from poles as Flaminius and his companions drew closer. It was a grisly, brooding sight.
They came out into a wide open space, surrounded by parapet and palisade on all sides. Bothies and granaries and one sizeable longhouse stood amidst the mud and grass.
A crowd had gathered among the bothies outside the longhouse. Flaminius saw many women and children. The men seemed to be otherwise engaged, guarding, or tending crops, Flaminius presumed.
The longhouse itself was a high roofed wooden building about half as big as the headquarters back in Eboracum. Reed thatch covered the high sloping roof, while ornately and brightly painted carved wooden beams thrust out from the peak. Again Flaminius saw skulls and severed heads arranged on posts before the longhouse. His mouth went dry. What was he getting himself into now? Would his own skull end up adorning a pole?
He jerked in his saddle as a war horn belled out from the far side of the bothies behind them. The spaces between the bothies filled with woad painted figures on horseback, their hair spiked with lime, spears and shields in their hands. Flaminius glanced at Probus. The centurion’s eyes were wide.
‘A trap!’ Flaminius shouted.
‘No,’ Probus shouted back. ‘Look at our escort! They’re as surprised as we are!’
The Selgovian riders who had led them into the settlement were staring in confusion at the newcomers who had appeared as if from nowhere. Their leader rode forward and shouted out a challenge. A chieftain among the newcomers shook his spear and shouted back.
‘What are they saying?’ Flaminius couldn’t follow the exchange. ‘Are they Caledonians?’ Surely Caledonians had chariots.
‘These are not Caledonians,’ Probus told him. ‘They seem to be a rival faction of Selgovians, who have come to dispute their capitulation.’
He watched the exchange between the two chiefs. The friendly Selgovians gripped their weapons uneasily and snarled. Finally, the rider at the head of the hostile newcomers shook his head vigorously, and made a curt gesture with his arm. He turned to his men, and urged them forwards.
‘They’re going to attack!’ Flaminius cried.
Probus scowled. ‘I should have foreseen this,’ he muttered. ‘This is what comes of listening to senators and their naïve notions.’ Falco’s plan was failing.
‘Auxiliaries, right wheel!’ Flaminius shouted. ‘Turn about and prepare to charge hostiles.’
With discipline that would shame these wild warriors from the edges of empire, the auxiliary troop rode round in circles to face the threat. Now they had the longhouse at their back.
Even as they turned about, though, their Selgovian allies met the first attack of the hostiles. Sword blades flickered in the dismal sunlight, spears rose and fell to rise again, bloodied. Ponies screamed, men fell to be trampled by their hoofs.
Flaminius saw one warrior ride straight at another, spear levelled as a lance, and spit his enemy straight through, so that the gory head of the spear jutted from between the Selgovian’s shoulder blades and he tumbled off the back of his steed.
‘Epona’s teats! Our allies are getting slaughtered, sir,’ Hrodmar reported, riding up to the two Romans. ‘Should we not be helping them?’
Flaminius was about to answer when Probus interrupted. ‘No, we should stay back and watch the fight. Let them cancel each other out. The fewer warriors remain, the easier we will find it to assert our rule.’
Flaminius scowled. How could the man be so ruthless? ‘May I remind you, centurion,’ he said, stressing the man’s rank, ‘that I am tribune here, and this is my command?’ He addressed Hrodmar. ‘Ready the men to attack.’
‘Pardon me, sir,’ said Hrodmar, ‘but the men are already prepared.’
Flaminius cursed silently. He could see the Selgovians still fighting unabated. The skirmish had only been going for a moment but already the muddy ground was littered with dead and dying ponies and men. He drew his sword.
‘Charge!’ he shrilled, and led the auxiliaries straight at the embattled barbarians. As they smashed into the struggling figures, he caught sight of Probus watching sardonically from the side-lines.
A Selgovian came at him, whirling a sling, and he ducked as the stone shot at him, then he rode forward, hanging by his left hand from his saddle, sword extended. As he galloped past the slinger, who was fumbling to draw his own sword, he slashed at his legs. He felt his blade sink into flesh and scrape bone. Blood jetted out and the man screamed in pain.
Then Flaminius was past him.
<
br /> Two more Selgovians rode at him. He stood up in his stirrups and brought his already bloody sword down on the first one’s helmetless head, splitting him from crown to jawbone. As the warrior fell back, covered in his own blood and brains, the next one jabbed at him with a long, wickedly sharp spear. Clumsily, Flaminius deflected the blow with his shield then cut at the man with his sword, opening up a gash in the man’s blue painted chest. Snarling, the warrior thrust his spear at Flaminius a second time, managing to get under Flaminius’ shield and hitting his mailcoat with the force of a battering ram.
Winded, Flaminius fought against the pain in his chest and swung a desperate blow at his attacker, catching him on the side of his neck. Blood showered his forearm. The man fell.
Flaminius caught his horse’s reins with his shield hand and sawed at them. His horse turned about and Flaminius saw on either side, his auxiliaries and the friendly Selgovians battling the hostiles. But even as he watched, Hrodmar, fighting the rebel chief, flung his sword like a missile at his enemy’s face. It went right through the man’s skull, jutting out of the back of his head and he fell back.
At that, panic rode through the ranks of the hostiles. Before Flaminius could shout another order, they broke up into undisciplined groups then melted away through the bothies and out of the settlement.
As the Selgovians sent riders after them to hunt them down, Flaminius returned to Probus’ side. ‘Thanks for your assistance,’ he said bitterly.
Probus shrugged. ‘A diplomatic move,’ he conceded. ‘Now you’ve cemented your alliance with the tribe by helping them wipe out their rivals, supporters of the Caledonians, sealing the pact in blood. Now those who waver in their feelings towards Rome will be more certain of which faction to support.’
‘I worked that much out myself,’ Flaminius replied, although in fact he was too tired from his exertions to assess the political situation. ‘Shame you couldn’t help us cement the alliance.’ None of this was working out as Falco had envisaged it.
Probus gave him a look that suggested he suffered fools, if not gladly than at least with tolerance. ‘I’m a commissary officer,’ he said. ‘My place is not on the battlefield.’
Flaminius returned his gaze coldly.
—8—
Trimontium, Selgovae territory
Several weeks later, a new camp had been constructed on the ruins of the old one, and despite some initial trouble while further rebel groups were subjugated, the Romans soon found themselves accepted into Selgovian society without undue fuss. Now Flaminius anticipated that Probus would subject him to more of the same drudgery that he had known back at headquarters, reading reports, assimilating data, writing reports, reading reports, writing more reports… And all without any of the entertainment that could be provided by Eboracum’s civilian settlement, too. The Selgovae didn’t even seem to have taverns or alehouses, let alone bath houses or racing tracks. Truly they were in dire need of Roman civilisation, if only to give the Romans themselves something to do.
But in the end he discovered that Selgovian life was the high life. Certainly if you were a noble retainer of the king, and Flaminius seemed to have become one by default.
They were a fascinating people. Some of their practises were more than a little barbaric, but Flaminius hadn’t—to his knowledge—encountered any actual druids yet, or seen human sacrifice. Instead he went on frequent diplomatic missions out to the surrounding farms and villages, where he and a few companions made diplomatic links with Selgovian nobles and chieftains. It consisted mainly of deer hunting by day and drinking heather ale and honey mead by night. Heather ale gave him wind, but he grew fond of mead—too fond, if truth be told.
Fond, too, of sitting round blazing fires in roundhouses and longhouses—even if his back was always icy cold, drinking and feasting down among the dogs and the household retainers, and he learnt to play the complex games with which these savage barbarians whiled away the cold evenings, one called throwboard becoming a particular favourite of his.
He had enjoyed the company of Drustica and her Carvettians, but now the Selgovians, who had seemed so ferocious and bloodthirsty at first, seemed to him to be more fun loving than other Britons. If anyone had told Flaminius that diplomacy consisted of such entertainments, he would have long ago decided to become a diplomat, not a soldier.
Since neither Flaminius nor Hrodmar, his usual companion on these jaunts, fully understood the local dialect, they were also accompanied by Ivocatos, who spoke broken Latin with a thick accent. Other Selgovians who accompanied them on their rounds of the local countryside included Ariotagos, Katuloukos, and the ovate Poredix. An ovate was a kind of junior druid, apparently, the closest Flaminius had come to such gentry and really something of a disappointment, quite benign, not one of the bloodthirsty maniacs of the stories.
Different factions within the tribe had their own ideas about the desirability of the Caledonians, on the one hand, and the Romans on the other. After the withdrawal of the Roman troops, the elders had gone over to the Caledonians out of a sense of pragmatism, those highlanders being the greatest power in the northern regions. But many Selgovians remembered with fondness the days when the Romans had first reached these parts.
‘We fell upon the camp and slaughtered the legionaries as soon as it seemed the Roman star was no longer in the ascendant,’ Ivocatos explained, ‘but it was with regret. Your people brought with them many good things.’
Flaminius looked away as they rode on across the heather. He knew that Falco’s plan for making friends with the barbarians could not be as selfless as it seemed. Lucius Aninius had openly disagreed with the move. In the end Probus had agreed with it, but only on the condition that it should be used as an opportunity for further intelligence gathering. He still thought it was a rash idea. They had already had to fight one desperate skirmish.
Ariotagos seemed to agree. ‘We will never be at peace with the Brigantes. Wolves and sheep will never be friends! As long as our northern cousins offer us aid, we will take it. It is our duty to the tribe.’
‘Why can’t both the Caledonians and the Romans leave us be?’ Poredix asked. ‘Then we could go back to the way it was between us and the Brigantes in the morning of the world.’
‘Who cares about the future or the past?’ Katuloukos said impatiently. ‘Time’s a-wasting. The deer will have gone by the time we get there.’ He kicked his pony into a gallop and rode towards the ridge.
Flaminius was less adept at deer hunting than his companions, but he enjoyed it nonetheless. To the Selgovae, however, it was a quasi-religious act, which reminded him that Drustica had once told him that their name meant “Hunters.”
In Roman society, hunting was a sport, a pastime of those rich enough to afford enough land to support deer or boar or other beasts of the chase. A few Italian tribes made their living by hunting and trapping, up in the Apennines, or the Alps. And of course, everyone was familiar with beast hunting from watching venatorial displays in the arena—but somehow that wasn’t quite the same.
To the Selgovae, who held their land in common, and therefore considered the herds that roamed it to be common property, hunting was another matter entirely. All very manly and admirable, Flaminius thought, like something from the days of Romulus and Remus. The trouble was, the Selgovae also seemed to see cattle raiding, driving off animals owned by other tribes, in a curiously similar light.
From a Roman perspective it looked a lot like stealing.
By the time the stag carcase had been bled and gutted, the sun hung low over the northern hills. Katuloukos suggested they ride for Uxellum.
Uxellum was the closest “town”, or hill fort, to the area where they had been hunting. It stood on a high hill surrounded by huge drystone walls that looked from afar deceptively like the ramparts of a Roman camp of long standing. The massive gateway echoed deafeningly to the hoofs of the riders as they rode in to receive a warm welcome from the chieftains and people of the hill fort. They accepted the young
noblemen’s quarry in return for a place by the fire in the main hall that evening.
Flaminius was made most welcome of all, no doubt due to his exotic origins, and he danced with many friendly local maidens that night. For some inexplicable barbarian reason they insisted that he wear the stag’s antlers as he danced, but the ensuing night proved to be suitable recompense for this humiliation. Or had it been a religious rite? Much as the Selgovae held lands and herds in common, so it seemed they practiced a primitive communism concerning their women.
That afternoon, the Uxellans went out into the meadows to play and sport. Flaminius left his armour behind and joined in the festivities. Quite what they were celebrating he was never quite sure, but he wasn’t complaining.
‘Next time you come with us, we will go to Corda,’ Ivocatos told him as they rode back to Trimontium. ‘It lies amidst the moors, lonely and magnificent, where the deer herds roam and only the wolf and eagle are stronger than men.’
‘I’m looking forward to it,’ said Flaminius, and he was speaking the truth.
When he rode into the Roman camp after bidding farewell to his barbarian friends, he felt sickened, repelled. The uniformity, every tent the same, every wall of the palisade the same. After days spent among the barbarians out on the wide open moors, his own people’s lives seemed bleakly regimented, sterile, and his own people resembled lumpen louts.
‘How was your journey?’ Probus asked as they entered his office.
‘Enjoyable,’ Flaminius said with a contented sigh. ‘Very enjoyable,’ he added.
‘The hunting was fine,’ added Hrodmar, who had been less enthusiastic during his stay. ‘The whores are better in Eboracum, though. When are we going to have a beast fight round here?’
‘I’ll thank you to give your report according to correct protocol,’ Probus grumbled at them.
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