by Jane Finnis
Eventually we got our first real taste of blood. One of the natives, braver than the rest, flung a heavy sheepskin on top of the big front gate and clambered onto it, protected from the spikes. He sat astride it, taunting us and boasting what he’d do to us when he jumped down. But he never jumped. Taurus ran forward, brandishing an axe, and we heard his yell of triumph as he swung it at the man’s dangling leg and severed it clean through at the ankle. Simultaneously one of our bowmen put an arrow into the native’s chest, and he let out a howl and pitched backwards onto his side of the gate. His foot fell on our side. In the exhilaration of the fight, it was wonderful, and even better when Titch ran forward, picked up the foot, still in its crude leather boot, and hurled it over the gate.
We all joined in with shouts of triumph; you could have heard us in Eburacum. But when eventually we paused for breath, there was a new sound outside in the big paddock, a high rhythmic shouting. Not a slow chant for moving a battering-ram; this was fast and angry. Close at my side, Albia’s voice came out of the dark. “Druids! Relia, it’s Druids cursing us!”
“I know.” I couldn’t catch the words of it, but it was Druid chanting, and they must be repeating their vile ritual curses over and over. So, I thought, the Druids have come with the young fighters, hoping to reclaim their holy place. It was a horrible sound and it made me shiver. I pulled myself together with an effort.
“Let them rant and rave!” I shouted. “We’re Romans, and Romans don’t fear the old gods!” Fine words, but my next thought wasn’t so brave. We’re not all Romans. Most of our people are natives, and maybe they do fear the old gods….
What saved us were two things, which happened quite close together. A loud, confident Roman voice—Brutus—began a familiar chant in return. “Eagles win! Romans rule! Eagles win! Romans rule!” It was a war-cry so old it was probably shouted at Hannibal and his elephants, and its solid rhythm was enough to drown out the Druid curses. Soon we were all yelling it at the tops of our voices, as if by the sheer noise we made we could force them to retreat. Our spirits lifted, but even as I felt this, some separate corner of my mind wondered if we should be making such a din; it would prevent us hearing what the enemy were up to. Reluctantly, I put two fingers in my mouth and whistled, and the comforting chant stopped.
And then the second thing happened. Over the Druids’ cursing we all heard the shrill, triumphant crow of a rooster.
Dawn! The one thing that could save us! Suddenly I realised that the clouds were splitting apart, and the faint glow of starlight showed above us. And to the north-east, the horizon was no longer jet-black but grey, and getting brighter with every breath we took.
“Cock-crow! The night’s over!” I yelled. “Look, it’s dawn! The gods of Rome are victorious, and the Druids’ gods are beaten! We can’t lose!”
Everyone cheered, and then above the cheering we heard, from the front of the compound, a shout and a huge splintering crash: they were finally using their battering-ram. Somehow they’d got it close enough to make one last, deadly attack.
Junius called to Marius to stay at the rear, and he and I and nearly everyone else raced to deal with the new danger. They were battering the fence near the gate; as I headed for it I tripped and almost fell over a body on the ground. The bowman we had left on guard was lying there with his throat cut. The traitor in the camp had struck again.
The men with the big tree-trunk ran at the fence a second time. After each blow they had to manhandle the ram back and make another run. It was a slow business, and I wondered how long it would take them to break through, under a hail of fireballs and a rain of boiling water. The answer came in the worst way possible. The fence broke at the third assault, bending inwards with a rending sound and sending wood splinters flying everywhere. A gap opened up, and there were many hands ready to widen it, and then the natives started piling through. Our men went forward in a disorganised mass, blocking the gap with their bodies and their weapons.
I stood a few paces behind the fight, but I couldn’t see what was going on, so I ran to one side and mounted one of the platforms. I held my long knife ready in case anyone broke through, and remembered what Lucius had told me. “If you’re ever stupid enough to get in a fight, Relia, either kick them in the balls or go for their eyes. That’s the only hope for an amateur, and it’s a last resort….” Well if this was the last resort, I’d be there at the bitter end.
But there were enough of us to hold them, and men to spare to hurl fireballs at them from either side of the gap. As the light grew, I could clearly see the struggling mass of fighters. I saw Taurus knock a man down with his huge axe, and as another warrior lunged at him, Brutus was there with a good sword-thrust at the man’s belly, and he fell dead. Another of our boys stumbled and fell from a heavy blow to the head; but a second man dragged him safely out of harm’s way, and Ursulus stabbed the attacker in the face with a pitchfork. Everywhere I looked, our people were holding the enemy back.
I realised with a surge of excitement that the besiegers had left it too late to use their ram. If they’d broken through in the pitch blackness, they would almost certainly have overwhelmed us, but by now we were exultant, invincible, and we had Apollo’s light to show us what was happening. Our men fought them off with swords and farm tools and sticks, and though fresh natives were coming forward into the gap to replace the wounded ones, the attack lost momentum and faltered. From where I stood, I could see that one last push from our side would finish the fight.
“They’re retreating!” I screamed out. “They’re beaten! Drive them back! Drive them back now! Now!”
Our men made a last supreme effort. The natives stood fast for only a few heartbeats, then they turned and ran. One or two of our people started to go after them, but Brutus roared at them and they had the sense to come back. Soon there wasn’t a barbarian to be seen anywhere.
Hippon came dashing across from the rear. “They’ve all gone! All of them! We’ve won! We’ve done it!”
And so, incredibly, we had.
Chapter XX
It was full daylight before I could really believe that we’d won, that the natives wouldn’t be back, at least not for now. Hippon and the stable-hands calmed the horses, and a party went outside into the paddock, and came back to report sadly that all fourteen of the mules there had been killed. Those, plus the two horses, were a bad enough tally of animal losses.
We had only lost two men—Marsus, and the bowman by the front gate. But most of our people had bruises and cuts, and a couple were quite seriously hurt; one had a badly slashed arm, and another had taken a sword-thrust in the shoulder.
Albia got busy patching up the wounded, while I organised food and warm wine for everyone. The victorious defenders ate and drank and congratulated each other. I didn’t blame them for playing the hero; they were all heroes to me, and I made sure I told them so.
It wasn’t till quite a late stage in the proceedings that I realised Titch was missing. I checked with everyone, but nobody had seen anything of him since the final stages of the fight. We hunted high and low, and I sent a couple of men outside to look round in the paddocks and by the river, but there was no sign.
“Stupid young idiot,” Hippon grumbled, halfway between exasperation and concern. “I suppose he disobeyed his orders and went outside to scout. When they retreated, he’d have to make a run for it. He could be anywhere.”
He could be dead, but I hastily pushed that idea out of my mind. I couldn’t bear that anything serious had happened to that cocky, cheerful little brat. After all, he was destined to be a general, wasn’t he?
Then Taurus called me over to look at the broken stockade. His expression was grim, as he pointed to the gap the battering-ram had made. “I thought that fence came down a bit quick. Look at these five stakes. They’ve been sawn half through, close to the ground. There was hardly any strength left there at all. They’d give way easily, you’d hardly have to touch them.”
“But the attackers cou
ldn’t have done that.” I felt cold inside.
“No. It was someone inside. Who?”
Who indeed? “And someone told the enemy where the weak place was, too.”
“I’ll find out who put up this section,” Taurus grunted. “I was round the back, mostly. But I’ll find out. I don’t like the idea of one of our own people….”
“No, wait, Taurus. We’ve got to box clever. We’ll keep this to ourselves for now, all right?”
He looked doubtful. “But if we’ve got a traitor here….”
“We have got a traitor here, that’s obvious, but we’ll let him think he’s got away with it just for the present. That way he’ll get over-confident and careless and it’ll be easier to catch him. We must be on the alert the whole time.”
“Well, if you say so. But we should tell someone else,” he insisted. “One more person, to cover the other watch from me. Then one man on each watch will know to keep his eyes open.”
That was good sense. I called Hippon over and we showed him the sawn timbers. He was speechless with anger at first, then he growled, “By Epona, when I find who’s done this, I’ll cut them in pieces.”
Taurus said, “I hope Master Quintus comes back soon. He’ll know what to do.”
“He will.” Oh gods, with everything else going on, I’d had no time to worry about Quintus, where he was, and why he wasn’t home. Perhaps he’d been out in the storm all night. Perhaps he was lying dead on the road somewhere….
Albia came out to me. “Relia, you’ll catch your death, standing about talking all morning. Come and get some food.”
“How are the wounded?”
“Pretty fair, all things considered. Except for Otho; his shoulder is quite bad. His woman is seeing to him now, but I’ll need to change his dressings later, and keep an eye on him for a day or two. By the way, has anyone looked at the man that Brutus killed? I mean, I suppose he’s really dead?”
“If he isn’t, you’re not wasting time nursing him,” I called out as she walked across to where the inert body lay.
“Jupiter’s balls, Relia!” Albia exclaimed as she bent over the man. “You didn’t tell me it was him.”
I turned to look at her. Albia never swears as a rule. “Who? I don’t know who it is. Just some horrible barbarian who got what he deserved.”
“But don’t you recognise him?”
I went over and gave the corpse a kick. “No. Should I?”
“It’s Balbus’ foreman. We saw him in the shop.”
“Merda, you’re right!” We both stood staring down at him, trying to work out the implications.
“Let’s go inside,” she said at last. “We need to get warm and dry, and then we need to take stock.”
We changed into warm, dry clothes and went to my study. Taurus brought in a brazier to drive away the cold, and we sat down with a beaker of wine each, and went over the events of the night.
We’d been extremely lucky. We’d survived in spite of several things that had gone wrong, and some of them could have finished us. The attack on the horses, the fire in the slave quarters, the big heap of hay-bundles soaked in the rain. Worst of all, the weakened stakes in the stockade, and the fact that the attackers knew where they were.
We had a traitor in the camp all right. Marsus had narrowed it down to one of two. But which of the tribunes was it?
“Most of the things that went wrong,” Albia said, warming her hands over the brazier, “were around the back—the horses killed, the fire, and the fireballs ruined, though I still think that could have been sheer accident. And Marius was in charge at the back.”
“That’s true, but the place where they broke through was at the front. Junius was in charge of the fence-building. He could have….”
“I don’t believe it! You saw the way he fought, Relia, you can’t seriously be thinking….”
“No, no, all right.” I was seriously thinking it, but I was too tired for an argument.
Suddenly Albia gave a great yawn, which made me yawn in sympathy. “Gods alive,” I said, “we’ve got to get some rest. Tonight could be just as bad, or worse even. But one of us needs to stay on watch. I’ll toss you for first to bed.”
I won the toss, and I wasn’t about to argue. I went quickly to the household shrine and said a short but heartfelt thank-you to the gods there; then I stripped off my outer clothes, crawled into my bed and fell instantly fast asleep. I was woken, what seemed like quarter of an hour later, by a hand shaking my shoulder, and Albia’s voice in my ear.
“Relia! Wake up! Come on, wake up!”
“I’m asleep. Go away.” But I knew she wouldn’t.
“Wake up! I’ve got some good news. Quintus has come home!”
I was fully awake, out of bed and running through into the bar-room before I’d time to remember I had only a light linen shift on, and no shoes. I didn’t notice the morning chill. I didn’t feel anything but pure happiness. I ran to Quintus as he ran to me, and we ended up embracing in the middle of the room. I suppose other people were there; I didn’t know or care. He was back, and he was safe!
Eventually I pulled away and said, “I must get some more clothes on.”
“You look fine to me,” he grinned.
It didn’t take me long to find a warm over-tunic and shoes, and to give my hair a quick brush. When I came back the bar-room was empty except for him. As he heard me enter, he turned and held out a beaker of Rhodian.
“We were so worried…” I started to say.
“I’ve been so worried…” he began. We laughed.
“Sit down and let’s do some catching up,” he said.
“I must check outside first. I presume nothing’s happened while I’ve been asleep, but….”
“No, I’ve had a look round, and all’s quiet. You’ve had quite a night of it though, I can see. I’ve sent Albia off to get some sleep. I told her not to wake you, but I’m glad she did.”
“I’d have killed her if she hadn’t. We were worried sick about you. What happened?”
“Oh, nothing much.” His purple eyes were laughing.
“What sort of nothing much?”
“Somebody tried to kill me. That sort of thing upsets one’s travel plans.”
I sipped more wine. “Some people will use any old excuse to avoid riding a few miles in the rain. I assumed you’d got held up by the bureaucrats at Eburacum.”
His smile faded. “That wasn’t the half of it. Lucius wasn’t there.”
“What? But his letter said….”
“I’m pretty sure the letter was a forgery, to get me away from here. Nobody at Eburacum was expecting him, or knew anything about a letter from him.”
“Merda! What did you do?”
“Once I’d got inside headquarters, I wasn’t leaving again till I’d seen somebody senior, and that’s what took the time. There’s trouble all over Brigantia. Everyone was rushing round in circles like dogs with fleas. I had to pull rank and jump up and down a bit and use Uncle Titus’ name, which got results in the end.”
“Results? Are they going to send us some help?”
He shook his head. “I saw the garrison commander. He was extremely sympathetic, but it seems the whole of Brigantia is seething like a pan about to boil over. There are other war-bands further west, picking on isolated settlers and threatening the roads. So he had no spare men to send back with me. With luck we’ll get some help in a couple of days.”
“A couple of days? Holy Diana! Can we hold out? Last night was terrible—I’ve never been so frightened. If they try again….”
“We’ll hold out. I wish I could have done more, but it took all my time to get even that much. And I wish I’d been here. I should have been here! I started for home in plenty of time. But I noticed a couple of horsemen riding along behind me. They were following me, not very cleverly. I’d spotted them earlier too, when I came in through the town gates, because they were wearing cavalry clothes but didn’t look genuine.”
“
Not genuine? Most troopers are handsome hunks with their brains in their backsides. So these two were intelligent-looking weaklings?”
“They just didn’t have the right amount of swagger.” He laughed. “They didn’t wear their uniforms properly. You know what I mean—like new recruits, not very comfortable in their gear. Anyhow, while I was in town I’d asked a friend to watch my back till I was well on the road home, just in case, and I knew he’d be following fairly close, so I got off my horse clutching my belly as if I was going to be sick, and led the two idiots down a track into the woods. They must have thought it was their lucky day, until my pal showed up behind them. They won’t be following anybody else. And when I looked at them closely, guess who they were?”
“I’m in the wrong mood for games.”
“Spoilsport! It was our old friends Nonius and Rabirius, the failed kidnappers.”
“Good riddance.”
“I agree. I didn’t want a lot of paperwork, so we left the bodies in a bramble patch in the woods. By then the storm was getting even worse and it was almost night, and I thought it was a foolish risk, to come riding that road alone in the dark. So I stayed in Eburacum, and set off just before dawn. I’m sorry, Aurelia. I feel I’ve let you down.”
“It couldn’t be helped. Albia’s told you what happened, presumably.”
“Some of it. You tell me now, all of it.”
So I told him about all of it, in as much detail as I could. He stopped me now and then with questions, and when I was done he was silent for a while.
“You did well,” he said eventually. “I just wish I’d been here to help.”
“So do I. The worst bit was knowing we had a traitor inside the stockade, as well as all the enemies outside it.”
“One of the tribunes,” he mused. “It fits with what we’ve learned already in general about the situation at Eburacum. And as you know, I’ve been wondering about those two. They could both be in it. They seem to be close friends.”