Paullus drew his sword, then thought better of it and demanded one from the closest recruit. When the Roman plunged the blade into the heart of the fire, the soldier opened his mouth to protest, but the look in Paullus’s eyes silenced him. Paullus bent and gripped the suspended Briton by the hair so he was looking directly into his captive’s face. ‘Now, Grandpa, let’s continue our little chat.’ The old man gasped something unintelligible and spat in his face, but the Roman only laughed. ‘Give him a taste,’ he ordered.
One of the young legionaries pushed the dangling prisoner so that the momentum swung him directly over the fire. The old man writhed and twisted, desperately trying to keep his body away from the heat. But the flames sought him out, and the hut filled with the acrid stench of singeing hair as his head was surrounded by a halo of flame that flared and died in an instant, accompanied by a grating scream of agony.
Paullus reached for the sword resting in the fire, but drew his hand back sharply when he felt the heat radiating from the hilt. He noticed Rufus watching from the doorway and grinned. ‘You’d have liked that, elephant man. Old Paullus getting a bit of his own medicine.’ He used his still bloody dagger to cut a square of cloth from a blanket and wetted it in a stone trough set to one side of the room. Steam hissed from the cloth when he picked up the sword, its iron blade shimmering red. He turned to the hanging figure, whose blackened tufts of remaining hair still wafted smoke towards a hole in the centre of the roof. ‘Now let’s hear the old man sing.’
The suspended victim shook his head wildly and gibbered a high-pitched rush of words. Paullus looked towards the interpreter. ‘Is he going to talk?’
The man shook his head. ‘He says Esus will rot the eyeballs in your head and make you piss maggots.’
Paullus laughed and stepped forward with the glowing blade and brought the point slowly towards the powerless Briton’s left eye. A commotion behind him stayed his hand a fraction before the red-hot metal kissed the old man’s cringing flesh and the woman he had abused earlier burst between the guards and threw herself at his feet. He frowned. ‘What’s she saying?’
The interpreter listened to the sobbing woman for a few seconds. ‘Her name is Veleda. This man is her father. She begs you not to harm him. She says she’ll lead us to the grain and the fodder. It’s hidden in a clearing in the forest, enough to fill all our carts and more.’
Paullus looked thoughtful. He turned to the leader of the legionary guards, a pink-cheeked young man with a square jaw and a squint in one eye.
‘Agrippa, take the woman and the two old men, but bind them tight and keep a sword at their back. The others stay here. Tell her I’ll gut her father and the brats at the first sign of a trick.’ He waited until the interpreter had translated his words, then placed the sword a hair’s breadth from the old man’s wrinkled belly and looked hard at the woman. ‘Understand? I’ll gut him.’ She nodded sharply. ‘Take them away. Elephant man, you’re in charge of the slaves. I want every grain of wheat and wisp of hay, or you’ll answer to me.’
The legionary guards marched the woman and the two elders from the hut and Rufus turned to follow, calling to the other baggage slaves to bring the wagons across the river. As he walked from the doorway, he heard Paullus say conversationally: ‘Now, ask him about the gold.’
The screaming started before they reached the forest.
It wasn’t possible to take the carts into the trees. The villagers had been careful not to leave any marked tracks leading to the clearing where they had cached their precious supplies. Instead, they had created a dozen well-disguised paths that were scarcely wider than those trampled by foraging deer. It was along one of these that Veleda led them, with the point of Agrippa’s sword at her back. Trees and thorn bushes grew tight to the track, plucking at the tunics of soldier and slave alike. Above them, the leaf canopy created a barrier that trapped the steamy heat beneath it, making the atmosphere in the forest depths oppressive and almost unbreathable. If anything, the day had grown even more humid and Rufus thought he heard the rumble of thunder in the distance. Eventually, Veleda stopped and pointed to an impenetrable wall of foliage. Agrippa studied what she was indicating with a look of suspicion, his squint growing more pronounced with each passing second. ‘If this is some kind of trick…’
The British woman didn’t understand the words, but she shook her head and approached the spot she had indicated. As they drew closer, Rufus saw it was a wall of still growing trees and plants, closely woven and carefully chosen to exactly match the habitat around it. Beyond this slim natural curtain was a clearing that contained a dozen small, raised wooden huts, which, on closer inspection, turned out to be storehouses filled with sheaves of hay and sacks of wheat and barley.
‘They build them on stilts to keep out the damp from the earth and stop animals getting at the food. I’ve seen storage places just like it in Germania. There’s enough here to feed a cohort for a week,’ Agrippa said cheerfully.
Low earth mounds on the clearing floor covered pits containing different types of cereals and pulses, and Rufus ordered his fellow slaves to begin digging up the buried food stores. On the far side was a fenced stockade where a dozen small sheep with matted brown wool grazed in silence. Agrippa frowned when he saw them.
‘I don’t think we can take them with us. If we release them they’ll just scatter into the forest and the wolves will get them. We should leave them here and send back some cavalry and a stockman to drive them in.’
‘Paullus won’t be happy,’ Rufus pointed out.
Agrippa grinned. ‘Paullus is never happy. I thought you’d noticed that. We’ll need half a dozen trips to get all this to the wagons.’ He shouted to one of the other guards. ‘Cestus, the old men and the woman can still carry something with their hands tied. Get the buggers to work.’
The slaves were already heavily laden. Agrippa ordered them into line with one guard in the van, with Veleda, and another bringing up the rear. ‘We’ll leave a couple of people to keep digging up what’s in the pits. It shouldn’t take us long to get back to the village.’ Rufus nodded and picked up as many sacks as he could carry before following the Roman back into the trees. He felt a spot of cold liquid splash on to the bare flesh of his forearm, quickly followed by another, then a dozen more. In a moment, big droplets studded the earth of the clearing, lancing diagonally from the heavens and creating little brown pools in any indent or hollow. The noise of the rain hitting the leaves was so loud that Agrippa had to shout to make himself heard.
‘This cursed country. Quickly, now. We need to get this into the carts and covered or we’ll lose half of it.’ He sheathed his sword and picked up a sack under each arm before trotting off after the column of slaves and captives, leaving Rufus to make his own pace.
By now the deluge was so fierce the young slave had difficulty following the track. He concentrated on Agrippa’s retreating back and tried to keep his feet moving through the increasingly heavy tangle of wet grass. In the twilight world of the storm-darkened undergrowth, the trees and bushes seemed closer than before, the thorns longer and more persistent. The grasping stem of a dog rose obstructed him and he looked up to discover that Agrippa had disappeared. For a moment he feared he’d be trapped for ever in this frightening green jungle that threatened to bury him alive. Then, as suddenly as it began, the rain stopped, and it was as if a veil had been lifted from his eyes. He was no longer in a threatening, claustrophobic tunnel, just a pleasant green pathway. The thorn bushes were scattered with delicate pink flowers which the raindrops filled like tiny diamonds. He could hear a bird singing a sweet trilling melody, and the rhythmic tap-tap of individual drops falling from the canopy on to larger leaves below. And the sound of clashing metal. Metal? With a lurch his world turned upside down. Now the grass he’d been walking on was in front of his eyes, each individual blade etched sharp on his brain. For a second he was surprised. He must have tripped? Then the grass blurred, and faded, and his vision turned black as night, b
ut not before his mind registered the leather-clad foot which planted itself an inch from his nose.
XI
There are different kinds of waking.
There is the restful waking in a soft bed, or even a hard one, when the brain is refreshed and instantly at the ready for whatever the day brings. There is the sluggish, glue-mouthed waking that is the aftermath of a half-remembered night of revelry that involved one cup of rough wine too many. Then there is the joyful waking, as one’s hand unthinkingly finds firm, rounded flesh, and the mind strays to the wonders of the night before and the body anticipates the pleasures yet to come.
Rufus’s waking was none of these.
He knew something was horribly wrong even before he opened his eyes. What was this unyielding, gnarled vegetable thing cutting into his face from eyebrow to chin? And another, trapping his arm beneath him and eating deep into his flesh. He was half upside down, with his neck forced at an angle by something crushing him from above. The thing was moving, enormously heavy, and at once hard and soft. He could barely breathe because of the weight bearing down on him. Warm, viscous liquid ran over his bare flesh — he was naked? — and into his hair and his eyes and his mouth. He tasted it, bitter and sharp and yeasty, as at the same time he recognized its smell. He choked and spat and his eyes snapped open with the shock. Human piss!
Still his brain took time to acknowledge the enormity of what was happening to him.
One eye was angled so it could see nothing but the pile of wood and logs at the base of whatever it was he was now part of. Because he was part of it, as much so as if he were jointed or nailed to it. The thing eating into his face was a twisted wicker strand, perhaps an inch across. His mouth was partially covered by the wicker and forced half open by the pressure crushing him. His other eye looked directly at a ring of grim, moustached faces. Two men were set apart by their bearing and the fact that they were clean-shaven. The one in the long cloak, with the shaven head; and a warrior…
There was an awful moment when realization took over from calculation and concussed bemusement was replaced by sheer horror. His body began to tremble, at least what little of it was capable of movement. He heard a high, whining sound come unbidden from his throat; a helpless, terror-stricken wail he now knew was being echoed by the nameless, faceless mound of living human bodies piled above him in this wicker trap. He closed his eyes again, hoping against hope that he was in some terrible dream; that he would wake once more and it would be gone. But there was no escape. Instead, his mind painted a picture of what was, and what was to be. He could see the giant structure, grotesque, yet vaguely human in shape. A great basket made up of wicker and tree branches, and filling its belly and breasts the human fodder that would soon fuel its fiery appetite. Sacrifices. He was to be a human sacrifice. He shook with helpless terror and felt urine shoot from him in short involuntary bursts. Now he understood. And there was worse occurring above him as his fellow captives began to realize the true horror of their fate. The stink of voided bowels filled the air. He could hear someone pleading from within the human tangle close by and thought he recognized the voice of Paullus, though it was difficult to tell since it sounded like the high-pitched bleating of a small boy. He felt the tree-man shudder as prisoners fought in vain to be free; to throw themselves on the merciful swords of their captors.
He had heard the tales of the Wicker Man, of captives put to death in the belly of Taranis, the thunder god, and trembled at the thought of it. He had never expected to see it. Now he was enduring its terrible reality. Why was he not going mad? Surely it would be better to be lost in babbling insanity than to lie here coldly considering his fate?
Soon they would begin to push the straw and branches into the basket between the living fuel. And then the songs would begin. Julius Caesar had written of the songs, or was it Strabo? What did it matter? He was going to die. When the Wicker Man was filled with enough flammable material, the Druid would come forward with his flaming torch, and then… ‘No! Gaius! Bersheba! Please!’ His wail rang across the glade where the British war chiefs had gathered to see Taranis receive the gift they prayed would turn the campaign in their favour. With one eye, he saw the warrior without the moustache frown. Was there something familiar about him?
The man had the place of honour beside the Druid. He was dressed in the finespun cloth of a Celtic lord, with a torc of twisted gold at his neck and a thick cloak about his shoulders, clasped by a bright, bejewelled brooch. On his left hip hung a long sword in an ornate bronze scabbard, its hilt decorated with rubies and glittering studs of precious metal. His left hand rested on a big oval shield with a swirling pattern etched into the copper and the figure of a charging boar at its centre. Some faint memory blew back the curtain of panic that surrounded Rufus. A charging boar. What was it?
The flicker of a torch in the Druid’s hand drew a collective howl from the trapped men. In a high, clear voice Nuada began the gift song of Taranis, quickly joined by the deeper tones of a dozen warrior kings, including Caratacus, who stood tall and straight at his side. The Catuvellauni leader watched the men trapped inside the thirty-foot construction squirming in terror, and steeled himself against pity. What must be, must be. These Romans had invaded his land. Now they would pay the price. His whole upper body vibrating, he let the song boom from his chest, felt the mesmerizing power of it in his mind. The loss of a fine moustache was a small price to pay for the information he had gleaned about the ‘monster’. He had resented it when his father insisted he should learn the language of the enemy, but now he acknowledged Cunobelin’s wisdom. The old man had known the Romans would return, and that his sons were destined to oppose them. He was determined they should have every possible weapon at their disposal. Caratacus remembered his father’s words as the trio sat by the fire in that fierce winter a dozen years before.
‘To face the enemy without fully understanding them is like facing them without a sword or a shield. It gives them a precious advantage. Hate the Romans if you must, but do not allow hate to cloud your judgement.’
Caratacus had listened. Togodumnus had sneered that he wanted nothing to do with the Romans but killing them. That was the night, Caratacus knew, when his father had decided he should be king.
He brought his thoughts back to the present. The Druids were pushing straw and thin branches that would feed the fire into gaps in the structure, and the tinder-dry gorse bushes that burned so fiercely when they were in yellow flower. The shrieks of fear were an assault on his ears and he vowed to close them when the flame was lit. A pity he had been unable to spend longer with the young man in charge of the elephant. It had been a very revealing conversation. Now he was sure the beast was no physical threat he could concentrate on combating the power of its symbolism. Togodumnus, the fool, was still determined it should be destroyed. Would he never learn?
The attack on the column his brother had ordered without his knowledge had infuriated the British war leader. How many men had they lost? How many irreplaceable warriors cut down for nothing but one man’s vanity? Three hundred, perhaps four. And worse, every man who escaped the carnage was now convinced of the Romans’ invincibility and spread whispers about the power of the ‘monster’. The damage was incalculable.
At last, Nuada was ready.
Rufus watched the Druid come forward with the flaming torch in his left hand. His mind threatened to freeze with terror, but he knew he couldn’t allow it. He must find the strength. Think! The boar. There was something about the boar. Then the words came to him as clearly as if he was hearing them spoken inside his head: ‘I have faced charging boars the size of a small bullock, but I doubt that I would stand before this.’
He forced himself to concentrate. The nose. Yes, the broken nose. That noble, who must be Caratacus, was the Gaul, the Gaul who had questioned him about Bersheba! He had only one chance. He opened his mouth wide to shout for the British king’s attention. But he had drunk nothing for more than a dozen hours and it was as if his th
roat was filled with pebbles. All that emerged was a pale imitation of an elderly crow that was drowned by the moans and screams of those trapped with him.
Nuada was mere feet away, his hand reaching forward to push the torch into the straw, where it would flicker, then burn, then consume. Rufus swallowed desperately, working his mouth in an attempt to find something, anything, that would lubricate his throat. He tried again. If he failed, he was dead. ‘Lord,’ he croaked. ‘Lord Caratacus. Bersheba. The elephant.’
Nuada’s winged brows knitted in puzzlement at the words, but he shook his head and forced the flaming torch into the straw beside Rufus’s head. The young Roman screamed in terror as he felt the first heat of the flames on his flesh.
‘Hold.’ The voice was firm and commanding and it was accompanied by strong hands beating out the fire.
‘What is this?’ Nuada’s voice was thick with righteous outrage. ‘It is sacrilege to deny Taranis his gift.’
Caratacus stooped to wipe his blackened hands on the grass at his feet and looked up at the Druid. ‘Do not oppose me in this, Nuada,’ he said quietly. ‘It is the will of the gods.’
He straightened and turned to the kings and war chiefs, who were staring at him in astonishment. ‘This man is a gift from Taranis to me, Caratacus, and I accept his gift. Does any man deny my right to it?’ He stared at each warrior in turn, daring them to challenge his authority. None would meet his eye.
‘I say burn them all.’
Togodumnus, of course. So be it.
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