‘Brace!’ Rogatus called out. ‘Shields up – use the point. Stick them in the feet, in the neck, anywhere you can. Big man – you get in the back and make sure we aren’t forced back by numbers.’
Ugo nodded and lumbered up. He grinned over at Drust, though his face was still wan. In the torch-dyed dim they waited, listening to the thunder of the ram and the answer of their own hearts; breathing was ragged, mouths went dry.
In the end, the gate didn’t burst open in splinters. The jamb buckled, as Rogatus had known it would, and the warriors outside dropped their timber balk and started worrying at the gap with axes, levering it with spears and, finally, Drust saw hands curl round and start pulling and tugging.
Eventually, the gate was torn off its hinges, straight out of the jamb. As soon as a gap appeared, showing the snarling, feral faces of men who wanted to kill them, Manius started shooting.
‘Don’t move,’ he advised Rogatus once, who had to wait and feel the snick of the flight passing his ear. In the end, though, the warriors came on, shields up, big slashing swords and axes ready. Under battered war hats and tangled, greasy braids, their eyes were desperate and howling.
Drust stabbed at the first one to hurl himself in the gateway, heading for the shields, but the man was moving too fast. He saw the flicker from his left, though, and shied away from it, stumbling sideways to Rogatus and the others. There was a swift movement and he screamed and went down.
Others crowded in, colliding with the locked shields, the pressure from behind crushing those in front. They tried to spill out but Drust and Kag were there. They had no room to wield their big swinging axes or slashing swords and so were reduced to howls and shrieks, shoving and stabbing.
They died swiftly at the front, the legionaries stabbing in short, controlled movements that the warriors could do nothing about. In what seemed a long day of it, Drust found himself in a reeking charnel house of blood and entrails, foul onion gasps, the high, thin smell of fear.
He was pressed up against the Wall, unable to move, barely able to shift the big shield up and down, but no blade could reach him though several tried. Those that did had no swing, just blunted points banging on the shield like some frantic late-night caller on a door. Once a long, notched blade slid over the top of the shield, missed Drust’s ear by a whisker and rasped the stone of the Wall. For a long, long time he and the warrior stared at one another across the width of his shield, until he knew every whorl of the skin marks, every louse that crawled in the red beard, every pore, pock and nick of the man’s face. He had green eyes that reminded Drust of the Domina Julia, but they blazed with an impotent fury and he struggled to get his big sword raised.
When he did he could not bring it down again and Drust flicked his own into the exposed armpit, feeling the flesh and cloth part like a cheese rind. The man gave a whimper and tried to reel away, but those behind stopped him. In desperation, he slithered to the ground and Drust, panicking at what he might do there, brought the shield up and down like a broken cullis until the man’s head was bloody pulp.
They were like two big Greek wrestlers in a tiny box, unable to do their moves, unable to beat the other with sheer strength, unable to do anything but strain back and forth. In the end even the shouting stopped, reduced to a frantic panting for air, for life.
Then the spear came through the gateway. Someone outside did it and was either an expert or did not care who it hit, Drust thought. It came past him, flexing, so slowed he could see the ripple along its length, the way it spun on its own axis. It could easily have taken one of the warriors in the nape of the neck, or even the ear of those who were half turned, looking for a way to step back, get out, get some air, get away from the crush.
Instead it whirred like a bird through them all and took Rogatus in the eye. He made no sound, just jerked his head as if to avoid it – too late – and Drust saw the bloody tip of it come out the back of his skull with a spume of blood: his helmet wanted to fly off but was tied, so it tilted down over his good eye, but it did not matter, for both were already dark.
Breach.
The warriors saw the hole his falling made and started to rush it before someone from behind could step in. The howls went up, so loud they buzzed through Drust’s head and he had the thought, dull as pewter, that now they were finished.
Then, above the wolfen wails, he heard a louder roar, half ironic, half fearful, and he knew the voice of Quintus, could almost see him grin his big grin.
‘Cave canem.’
Dog had stripped to no more than a loincloth, the subligaculum of a true dimarchaerus, and he had a shining gladius in either hand. His face was a grinning rictus of wickedness, a night horror from every one of the enemy’s dreams. He launched through the gap and death came with him.
Even if they had wanted to fight him they couldn’t, but most tried to reel away, panicked and screaming at this apparition. The swords worked in a flurry, like the Persian chariots Drust had seen once or twice in the Circus, a novelty item to make blood for the crowds between proper races.
He stepped lithely over the tangled, writhing bodies while warriors slipped and stumbled, half fell and scrabbled away, back out the door, over the carpet of dead and dying. No one was fighting him with any skill or desire; they were all flailing wildly to get away.
He went past Drust, out under the gate, and Kag gave a loud groan. He and Drust looked at each other, then Kag said ‘Fuck’ and followed him. Drust pumped in some foul air, blew it out and went after them both – somewhere, as if in a dream, he heard horns blow, as if the harena marked the next entertainment.
Outside, the warriors had scattered and Dog had stopped, his chest heaving, dripping with gore from the shoulders to the waist and beyond, as if he wore a scarlet cloak with a ragged hem. He turned his face, a crimson skull with blank, dark sockets where the eyes were supposed to be; Drust stepped back a little. Dog stepped up to where a groaning warrior crawled weakly back towards his war chief. He buried both swords in the man’s lower back and squatted to twist them, pull them out, work them in again; the warrior howled and more blood flew up, spattering everywhere.
Beyond, the war chief was yelling and waving his arms, but Drust couldn’t hear what he was saying and did not look for long. All he saw was a sea of warriors, waiting to surge forward. Kag said ‘Fuck’ again, clearly and with no tremor.
‘Back to back,’ Drust said and wondered if Dog had understood, then saw the man was grinning under the skull face’s permanent smile. He got up, blew a mist of someone else’s blood from his inked teeth and laughed.
‘They are going,’ he said and Drust looked. It was true. Left and right, warriors were scrabbling down through the stakes into the ditch, clawing their way up the far side. In front of them, they were starting to move back, quick but still ordered.
‘Ha,’ said Kag, and waved his sword as if he had personally caused it all. Then he heard the horns as Drust did, as Dog already had, and looked embarrassed.
The Army had arrived.
* * *
Titus Floridus Natalis, Quartis Pilus Prior announced himself with the air of a man reporting to the Emperor and confident in his role as senior centurion of a 4th Cohort. He stood with his helmet tucked under one arm and his regulation vinestaff tucked under the other, looking Drust and the others up and down.
He blinked once or twice at the Domina Julia, streaked with dirt, her dress stained. His eyes widened slightly at the sight of the boy, smiling beneficently.
When Falco stepped up, bloody and filthy but giving a firm regulation salute, Titus could not hide the relief of something familiar. Falco, now in charge, gave his report in quick, succinct tones and Titus nodded once or twice.
‘I am sorry to hear of Rogatus. Good man. You have other casualties, I understand.’
‘Two, yer honour. Caius has a broken arm, Lentulus has a broken head. If it wasn’t for these here gladiators, we’d have been worm food, for sure.’
Now Titus had to
look at them and they saw his disgust at the sight of them. Knew it from old.
‘Gladiators,’ Titus said slowly and then stopped at the sight of Dog, the blood on him drying to a dark rust, his face even more a nightmare. Titus had seen a lot of horrors in his career but even he blanched at this one.
‘Gladiators,’ he repeated slowly, ‘is fat poncified slaves dancing about like Greek girls. They do not save the Army.’
‘You would do well to revise that opinion,’ said a light voice, and the centurion turned, stiffened slightly and bowed from the neck.
‘Domina. I merely state what I know to be true.’
‘Then you are an idiot.’
Titus’s face seemed to writhe as if snakes wriggled beneath the skin. He recovered, breathed deep and turned back to Falco.
‘Gather up your dead and wounded, load them on that cart. You are relieved. I will leave a vexillation here to tidy up and repair. Domina – you and your son will proceed south to the Wall of Adrianus. Sorry, but only there will you find proper transport, cart or litter.’
‘My escort?’
Titus looked blank for a moment, then realised she meant the gladiators and wondered what a woman of the Hill was doing with a pack of them. He’d heard rumours of course of what went on – now and then you got salacious gossip about some high-born tart running off with a favourite of the harena…
‘Horses,’ she said, ‘for all of us. I wish to be quit of this pestilential country as quickly as possible.’
Titus gave in, forced a smile, tried to be equable and mend what was clearly a broken fence.
‘Yes,’ he said knowledgeably. ‘I have noticed how the Empire places its frontiers in the worst possible spots.’
‘Never a problem in Trajan’s day,’ Kag said sweetly.
* * *
Dog doused himself in water and let himself be scrubbed with cloths until he was pink and the ground around him snaked with scarlet runnels. They hunkered in the shelter of one of the destroyed outbuildings and ate legionary porridge from borrowed bowls – it was hot and wonderful and they watched other men struggle from the tower with body after body.
‘We sixed a few,’ Ugo said. He actually looked better, Drust thought. War suits him.
Falco came up, Shambles and Mule and the wounded Caius with him. They stood in front of the gladiators and eventually Falco cleared his throat.
‘Thanks.’
Drust nodded. Kag waved one hand, Ugo grunted, Sib simply scowled and Quintus grinned his big grin. Manius looked up once and studied them, then went back to eating. Dog never looked up at all.
When they had gone, though, he scooped bread round his bowl and paused before sticking it in his mouth.
‘That was nice of them,’ he said. ‘Never get that from Tight-Arse the centurion.’
‘Don’t want anything,’ Sib muttered, ‘save a good horse and a road south.’
What they got was a long ride in the rain, travelling at the pace of the poor sod Heavies who made up the escort and trudged down the middle of a decent, recently repaired road while the horses and baggage carts sensibly took to the verge. It saved hooves and wheels, but nothing prevented the soaking rain.
‘The thaw is here,’ Dog noted, his hood up and a scarf bound round his face so that only the eyes showed. He looked at his least confrontational but still the trudging legionaries squinted suspiciously at him over their burden yokes. They spent more time laughing and pointing at Ugo, who had a swayback mare that let his feet almost drag on the ground. They called out ‘dog rider’ to him when they thought no one in authority could hear.
‘The Hood will be on the march soon,’ Kag declared at one rest halt, a mansione which had been refurbished and smelled of new wood and cooking. It was luxury, and Ugo sat at the open-shuttered window, gloating while he pilled bread and threw it at the luckless legionaries who squatted under hastily erected tented hangars.
‘He will wait a while yet,’ said the optio commanding the escort. ‘Until the ground has dried. That could take to high summer and even then it will rain.’
The Army medicus who had attended to their various cuts and bruises on the instructions of Domina Julia had confirmed that more men were falling from chest infections and coughing sickness than swords and axes.
‘Your big German there is healing,’ he said, nodding at Ugo. ‘Cracked a rib and nicked a lung, I think. Keep him warm and dry if you can – such an infection will be fatal.’
Warm and dry was what they had in small measure only in a military rest stop which was so new, Sib swore, squirrels were still nesting in the timbers. That hadn’t prevented the first whores from moving in and, in time, the place would become like all the others, even the ones for the army – shabby, infested with fleas, whores and thieves.
It would take two days to reach the big Army fort at Luguvallium, another three, perhaps even four, to get to Eboracum – the optio wasn’t marching hard because he was escorting a high-born Roman lady and her son. He was, however, happy about the rain.
‘Keeps those tribal lice in their foul huts,’ he growled, wiping wine off his moustaches. ‘Biggest fear round here is that they break the truce between the Walls and come out fighting while the Emperor is off in the north.’
They were handed over like packages in Luguvallium – Drust and the others were taken off to be stuck in an empty barrack block and he saw how many there were. All the troops were in the north, beyond the new Wall they were now calling ‘Severan’, waiting for the chance to conquer what remained of the country.
There were dry, proper beds, decent food and a chance to braid themselves back, sort out equipment and start thinking about how they might just have pulled this trick off after all.
‘I mean,’ Sib said, ‘two days, maybe a bit more and we are home and dry, friends. We get our copper citizen plaques and our cash.’
‘What will you do then?’ Manius asked, touching his head to feel for the healing scabs. The medicus had given him some green ointment to smear on it, which added nothing to his look.
Run a Roman mile from you, was what Sib thought. And when I get to the end of it, run another and keep going. But he smiled. ‘I may go back to my people.’
‘Who are they?’ Manius asked interestedly. ‘I am a mongrel from El Kef, which the Romans call Sicca Veneria, but everyone assumes we are brothers.’
No brother of mine, you desert demon, Sib thought, but he managed a smile. ‘I am Toubou,’ he said. ‘Go south of Lepcis Magna until you come to the land of those you know as Garamantes. Go south still and there are the Toubou.’
‘A long way. Too far and in too many lands of bandits to be hauling all that cash, brother. I will make for the City and consider myself Fortuna’s favoured if I get there unwounded and rich,’ Kag said, then accepted the agreeing nods of Ugo and Quintus like a senator who had made a good point from the floor.
‘Who would dare attack a citizen?’ Quintus added, grinning. They all laughed wryly.
Drust had not thought about what would happen when they succeeded, mainly because he had never quite believed they would. In the rare moments he had, it had been a poignant realisation that, one day, they would all go their different ways, like leaves fluttering from an autumn tree.
He did not want to admit to anyone, not even himself, but he dreaded the day and was aware that he had invested too much in them. They were not brothers, even if they called themselves such. He was not the head of a family, just a battered second-rater from the harena.
Dog, peculiarly, seemed to have some insight into it, but it was never said, simply revealed in a hard-palmed hand on Drust’s shoulder in the quiet dark.
‘Before we all go our ways,’ he said quietly to Drust, ‘there is the problem of getting the Domina Julia and her marvellous boy into the hands of Kalutis. This escort will march us up and into the fort at Eboracum. Right into the imperial apartments and the hands of her enemies.’
‘Who are her enemies?’ Drust demanded with a f
rustrated wave of one hand. ‘Her mother? Her aunt? Any one of three emperors – or all of them? Even she will not say.’
Dog frowned. ‘I know no more than you, but when I set this in motion it was through Kalutis, who is Servilius Structus’s man in the north. It was the Domina Julia herself who sent me to him, so the only safe thing to do is to take her and the boy there.’
There was silence while they chewed on it. Drust was sure the only way they would see any reward was through Kalutis, and he had not known the Domina herself had recommended the man. She must know what was best…
‘We must speak to her,’ he said eventually, and Dog, who had reached the same conclusion, simply nodded.
They waited until the last mansione on the road to Eboracum before going to her. If they needed to make a break, they’d have to do it from here and have a long, hard ride through the night, hopefully leaving the foot-sloggers far behind.
They found her in a small room, her son dutifully beside her. She looked radiant, wrapped in a soldier’s cloak against the damp chill and, though a bath had been beyond the amenities, she had washed in hot water and borrowed some of the less garish face paints from whores on the way. She looked regal, sitting on a cushioned bench with one leg tucked up, painting a toenail, with her tongue stuck out slightly between her teeth.
The sight struck Drust with a bewilderment of feelings. He wanted to put his head in her lap and have her stroke his hair – his mother had done that. He wanted to fuck her up against the damp plaster wall.
When Dog had finished telling her what he thought was what, she stopped attending to her toe and sighed.
‘I usually have a slave who can do this. I never get it right, and in this poor light I am likely to have it everywhere. The colour is called, I am assured by the raddled sow who sold me it for far too much, Syrian Sunset, but by the time I am done with it my toe will simply look as if some horse stepped on it.’
The boy laughed. ‘You should have got me to do it, Mother. We have talked about this before.’
Beasts Beyond the Wall Page 24