by George Green
Serpicus smiled. At least Consilius now had a reason.
Chapter Twenty-Two
When Serpicus was a boy his father told him that Gelbheim was the first proper settlement in Germany. Serpicus suspected that almost every village in Germany probably made the same claim. However, standing on the low hills that separate the great winding silver rope of the Rhine from the land of the Treveri and looking across, it was easy to see why a displaced people walking across the German plain searching for a place to settle might choose to live in the place now called Gelbheim. The Treveri lived in several dozen villages, each with its own chief and distinct identity, but they all called themselves Treveri, and they all acknowledged that Gelbheim was the first, the village from which their fathers came.
The river Talis, a tributary of the Rhine and at this point only a few leagues from its apotheosis, wound wide and slow like a well-fed snake through the broad green fields that followed it on both sides. Serpicus remembered the rich black earth, and how if a man crumbled it in his hand it smelt of life. Everyone in Gelbheim knew a man who knew a man who had met a traveller, and how the traveller told the Gelbheimer how, only the day before, he had driven his spear into the black earth beside him while he stopped to piss, and how by the time the traveller had finished there were broad leaves and heavy fruit growing from the spear-shaft. Crops leapt up thick from the ground, dark wide-bladed grasses brushed along the deep bellies of the horned cattle that grew fat in the fields. Every other tribe bordering their territory knew that the lands of the Treveri were the finest in Germany, and throughout their history almost all of their neighbours had tried to take it away from them. But it was said by their druids that the feet of the Treveri had sunk deep in the soft soil like roots, and that there was no tearing them up. If the Treveri were to leave this place they would surely wither and die, and so they had no choice but to fight for their land like heroes, to the death or to victory. What is certainly true is that they had defended their land successfully against every attack ever made on it, and did it with a ferocity that had deterred any new attempt for over twenty years.
The village itself was on a tear-drop-shaped piece of land contained by the last bend of the river Talis before it straightened out for its final rush to join the Rhine. The river curved around the village like a mother’s arm around a child, surrounding the wooden houses on three sides. This made the village hard to attack and even harder to retreat from. The Gelbheimers had become expert boatmen, using a coracle of willow and oiled deer-skin that was so light that it could be carried easily by a small child and yet would support a fully armed warrior on the water. Every Gelbheimer boy learned from his father how to make them, and looked forward to the day when he would make one for himself. It was a solemn part of the ritual of becoming a warrior, and no other man would ever use it except him.
The coracles were called seges, in honour of Segestes, Chief of the Treveri at the time of their greatest danger. Generations earlier, the village was besieged and completely surrounded by a hostile alliance of tribes. There was little food left and hardly a man in Gelbheim was left uninjured after several days of desperate fighting. Some of Segestes’ councillors advised him and his personal guard to take to the river, to leave the village and save the line of his people from extinction. Segestes heard them in silence, then left the council chamber without replying and walked down to the river-bank. The whole tribe, gathered outside the council to hear the debate, followed him. Segestes stood over the coracle he had built many years before. He raised his foot and then brought it down on the craft with all his strength, smashing it beyond repair. There was a silence, and then Caspar and Vladmir, his two greatest champions, walked silently to his side and did the same to their own boats. With a loud cheer every man ran forward and within moments there was not a serviceable coracle left on the river-bank. With no possibility of escape left, the Gelbheim warriors returned to the battle filled with new strength and without fear. In a great struggle lasting two days and a night the alliance of tribes was driven from the lands of the Treveri. Segestes was killed fighting at the head of his men, and in his honour the boats were named for him.
A good lesson was learned that day by the Treveri, about how men fight, and why. Since that day, if in a fight a chance to encircle their enemy on all sides arose, the Treveri had always declined it. Their enemy was always left an avenue of retreat. The Treveri knew that they would rather fight a man who keeps looking over his shoulder at the possibility of self-preservation, than a man who has no escape remaining to him and therefore has nothing left but the possibility of making a glorious end for himself.
Serpicus took a deep breath, preparing himself to return to the place where he was born. There was a constriction in his throat. It was a cold morning. He blew his nose on a cloth. Cold air can blur the vision and also make it hard to swallow sometimes.
They were camped next to an upright stone as tall as a man. On it were intricately cut lines, swirling around and back so that they formed the shapes of waves rolling up a beach. Below these designs were more geometric shapes, angular and solid, fitting together like jagged stones. It was a useful landmark if they needed to return to the same place.
Galba stood beside Serpicus’ horse and pleaded with him. ‘Try and come back to get us before this bloody rain starts up again, please?’ Serpicus smiled and urged his horse forward, following Brutus and Decius down a narrow trail that followed the slope of the hill that was the horizon for the villagers.
The three of them circled around to approach the village from the front. The last thing any German village wants to see, at any time but particularly at a time of insurrection, is twenty or so heavily armed and foreign-looking men moving purposefully towards them out of the morning gloom. In their position Serpicus knew that he too would sooner throw a spear first and ask questions afterwards. No one wanted to give the villagers any excuse to mistake their intentions.
It was early, and the village was still quiet. The grass was wet and cold and a thin memory of mist still covered it and clung to the horses’ legs. A string of smoke curled slowly upwards from behind the wooden walls, either the last of the night fires or the first of the morning’s. Immediately in front of the palisade was a cleared area grazed freely by goats and cows during the day, to remove even the suggestion of cover for any attacker.
On each side of the main gate, well within bow-shot of the sentries, the pens that protected the animals at night were arranged in neat rows. There were other similar areas inside the village where the animals were kept when there was the risk of an attack; the fact that the animals were still outside presumably meant that Gelbheim was not expecting trouble. Serpicus wondered if it was therefore safe to assume that the Treveri – or at least this branch of them – had not joined the rebellion. Yet.
The river-encircled teardrop of land on which the village stood was an outcrop of rock, a grey, hard, speckled protrusion of stone. Its hardness was, the Treveri presumed, the reason why the river had not worn it away. The village was thus the highest point in the valley. When the rain fell hard and the Talis flooded, the entire valley floor was covered in water, except for the rock that the village sat upon. It was this regular flooding that made the land fertile, and the villagers happily salted their meat and dried their vegetables all summer in preparation for the weeks when the fields all around them were underwater and the only way out of the village was to paddle a flimsy coracle over the cold and dangerous floodwaters to the hills on either side of the valley.
Serpicus looked at the village and the memories swept over him. There was no stone wall around the village, for the Treveri, although no longer nomads given to wandering across the countryside, still moved the boundaries of the village from year to year as the population varied and the floods dictated. A stone wall would have been impractical, too constricting. So they had built the defensive wooden palisade near the top of their teardrop of land, running from where the river bent away from its own line to wh
ere it curved back again to resume it. It was constructed in rectangular overlapping sections, which could be dismantled quickly and realigned as and when necessary. Sharpened stakes pointed up and outwards from the base of the parapet, to discourage attackers from climbing up it. The line of stakes swung in a broad rank in front of Brutus, Serpicus and Decius as they approached, then curved inward, funnelling the approaching travellers as it would any attacker towards the main gate, forcing them to pass under the arch that loomed over the approach to the village.
There were usually three guards on the wall, one on the gate and one at each end of the palisade, where it met the river. The guards would have plenty of time to rouse help by the time an attack covered the open area in front of the gate, so not many were needed. The two by the river were insurance; in practice, if the man on the gate was awake, the others could sleep.
Serpicus knew that several other men would be patrolling the river-bank behind the village. He could see that the river was unusually high, the rain had swelled it until the turbid water lapped the top of the bank. Broken trees poked thin branches up from the surface like fingers, and a dead sheep swollen until it resembled an over-filled wineskin came down the river, turning in slow circles.
A sorrowful-looking dog wandered without intent across the clearing between the three new arrivals and the gate. It saw or smelt them and looked up, one foot poised. It watched for a while as they moved steadily towards it, and then barked once before trotting away, its job apparently done.
A face appeared over the palisade immediately above the main gate. It looked steadily in their direction for a short time, then disappeared. A few moments later it reappeared at ground level, framed by the gate and supported by a body that in a young man would be described as ‘solid’, whereas in an older man would more likely be called ‘stout’. He was still just about young enough to carry it off, but was at the point where he was going to have to grow younger again or the epithets were going to get less kind. He drew himself up, drove the butt end of his spear into the ground near his foot and held the top end out from his body at arm’s length, at the angle that guards all over the world seem to adopt instinctively. His face was small and round and surrounded with a halo of red curls that stuck straight out from his head, making him look like an aggressive tomcat.
Decius spoke to Serpicus without turning to look at him. ‘Do you know him?’
‘I don’t,’ said Brutus.
‘His name is Hansi,’ Serpicus said.
Brutus leant forward squinting. ‘Is that really Hansi?’
Serpicus nodded. ‘He’s got fat. Maybe we have too, he doesn’t seem to recognize us.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ muttered Brutus. ‘I’ve hardly changed at all.’
The guard let the three horsemen get quite close before speaking. Full daylight hadn’t arrived yet and there was mist behind them. Serpicus thought that it must look to the guard as though they were dark wraiths, risen from the earth.
‘Good morning,’ Brutus said, pulling the horse to a halt just over a comfortable spear-throw away from the guard and keeping his hands in clear sight.
The guard looked at them with mild curiosity for a few moments. ‘Good morning,’ he replied. He looked at them some more. ‘You aren’t from our tribe,’ he said, ‘because I don’t know you. You aren’t travellers because you have no supplies. You aren’t attackers because there aren’t enough of you and no one is throwing spears at me. So, who goes there?’
‘Friends,’ Serpicus said. ‘At least, we were once. We’ve been away a while, but I know you. Don’t you recognize us, Hansi?’
The guard’s amiability disappeared and his grip on his spear tightened. ‘Just because you know my name doesn’t mean I know you,’ he snapped, ‘and I don’t much like it. You look and sound and smell like Romans to me. You’ve three heartbeats to explain who you are before I come over there and put a doorway in your chest.’
‘It’s been a long time, but I’ve changed less than you.’ Serpicus held his hands out from his body in a way that he hoped was unthreatening. ‘Don’t you remember the day we went to spy on the girls down by the swimming hole, and you overbalanced and fell in and got caught, and the Chief made you swim around all day until you were almost drowned and even the girls begged him to let you come out?’ He got down from the horse and walked a few steps closer. ‘You were thinner in those days.’
‘I’m a better swimmer now, and unlike you I don’t have to spy on the girls any more.’ Hansi leant forward and peered at them. ‘You sound like a Roman but you do look a bit like Alraic who was there that day. I don’t know who the kid is. The other one is big enough and ugly enough to be that thug called Carvanus who used to be from Glaudern, but the Carvanus I knew then wasn’t anything like as fat as this one.’ He looked quizzically at Serpicus. ‘You only went out to fetch a bucket of water and it’s been, what, seven years? Where the hell have you been?’ Serpicus smiled as he felt a prickle of recognition at the unfamiliar names.
Brutus lost patience and pushed his horse forward to walk quickly towards the village. ‘Being held hostage for your good behaviour, you fat peasant, or we’d all have been home long ago. Now stop fucking around and let us in. We’re cold, we’re soaked through, we’re starving, and most of all we need a drink.’
A huge smile split the guard’s round features and he rushed forward to reach up to Brutus. ‘It is you,’ he said, pointing delightedly at Brutus and then turning to Serpicus with his arms spread wide. ‘I never thought I’d see you again. Actually, I never thought of you at all, which is the same thing. What are you doing sneaking around here this time of the morning?’
‘Just visiting,’ Serpicus said, disentangling himself from Hansi’s exuberant embrace.
‘Business or pleasure?’
‘Business, but we were hoping for some pleasure too,’ said Brutus, swinging his leg over his saddle and dropping down to the ground. Decius was already there and looking around with wide eyes as they walked towards the village.
‘Excellent idea,’ said Hansi. He walked over to a young warrior who was dozing nearby and planted his toe hard between the boy’s ribs. ‘Look after the gate for a while, I’m going to take these two in.’ The boy staggered to his feet, wiping sleep from his eyes. Hansi looked at the boy critically and pointed at the three riders. ‘If any more of these pretend Romans turn up, you make them stay here until I get back, all right?’ He leant forward and grabbed the boy’s shoulder. ‘All right?’
The boy made a sound of assent, stumbled sleepily forward and leant against the gatepost with a heartfelt yawn. Hansi strode off shaking his head, and led them towards the centre of the village.
While Brutus explained to Hansi how Alraic and Carvanus had become Serpicus and Brutus, Serpicus looked around. He knew where they were going. Little had changed. The Chief’s house was in the middle of the village and was the largest on view, but it wasn’t a palace and it didn’t belong to him. He lived in an unprepossessing corner of it. The large hall that made up the rest of it was used for village meetings and any sort of celebration. The villagers always called it just ‘the Hall’, whether they meant the Chief’s house or the meeting place. He didn’t mind. The Treveri set little store in possessions – apart from weapons – and their glory was measured in the number of heads a man had taken, not by how big his front door was.
A couple of guards were dozing outside the entrance to the Hall. As Hansi and the others approached they straightened up into a slouch.
‘What do you want, fat boy?’
Hansi visibly bristled. He glanced back at Serpicus to see if he had heard. Serpicus kept his face neutral and looked casually around at the village. Hansi shoved his chest out at the guard. ‘Visitors.’ He leant forward to the guard and said, slightly more confidentially, ‘And if you ever call me that again, I’ll break your back.’
Serpicus thought that the guard didn’t look too frightened.
The patchwork of heavily furred
skins that curtained the entrance to the Hall was pulled back from the inside, revealing a tall and deeply tanned man whom Serpicus didn’t recognize. He was wrapped in a long cloak of silver fox edged with something grey.
‘What’s going on?’ the tall man asked. Serpicus noticed that his voice was not thickened with sleep. He had been awake for some time.
The guard pointed at Hansi and then the three visitors. ‘The fat man brought these men into the village.’
Hansi’s hands tightened into fists at that but he said nothing. Serpicus took note. The tall man in front of them was a powerful person in the village, or Hansi would not have bothered controlling himself.
The tall man looked at them in a way that made them stand up straighter. ‘You are welcome.’ He looked at Hansi. ‘Is it too early in the morning for introductions?’ Hansi looked dazed for a moment. Serpicus smiled to himself. It was probably all a bit too much for the guard. Then Hansi got hold of himself and stood to an impression of attention.
‘This is Alraic, from our village, and this is Carvanus, from Glaudern. They were taken hostage by the Romans seven years ago and are now returned.’
Hansi looked at Decius blankly and apparently decided that there was nothing to say about him. Serpicus put a hand on Decius’ shoulder. ‘Decius. From Praunberg, although he has family here. His people called him Sigmund.’
The tall man nodded and smiled at Decius. ‘Then you are twice welcome.’ He stepped aside so that they could come into the house.
They gathered just inside the door. The room was dark and simply furnished. A wide bed with no one in it, covered by several thick furs. Two chairs either side of a low table, and stools at the end. A fireplace with a cooking pot on a rack at the side of a damped-down fire.