Today the fog had burned off completely, and the sun lent a brightness and a dazzle to the scarlet and bronze of the Legion and the wild blue war paint of the Britons, as if through the mists of time an ancient struggle had come suddenly into focus. The gates caved in almost simultaneously, with a noise of rending timber, and as the wall defenses were drawn off to reinforce the opening, the Picts began surging over the ramparts as well, silhouetted for a moment against the sky before they dropped down into the fort below. They dropped, most of them, to the end of a pilum, but a few slipped through to take at least one hated Roman with them into the otherworld. Albinus, for instance, never saw the naked, darkeyed warrior who drove a feathered spear clean through him; never knew that before his body had tumbled from the rampart, Favonius had leapt like a goat from his catapult emplacement and sent the Pict to join him. Or that Clemens, heading down the rampart stairs behind Justin, had paused long enough to grab another tattooed figure by the throat and hurl him downwards on the men scaling the wall behind him.
After that the thin defenses on the rampart held them off as best they could while the bulk of the Legion gathered below them to block the onslaught at the gates. The haunting sound of war horns came down along the wind, and the main body of the war host gathered itself for one last terrible charge. They came like a band of furies, blue as the light that flickered from sword and spear, and they seemed to rise from the ground itself.
Justin, reeling before the wave that surged and broke against the guardians of the north gate, found himself again shield to shield with Clemens, with what was left of his old Eighth Cohort behind and to either side of them. Lepidus was lying badly wounded in the hospital, and Justin, without much thinking about it, had taken command of the Eighth again… the troublesome, quarrelsome Eighth that had become under his command a Roman fighting force once more. He was prouder of that than of most things, he realized, as he felt Clemens’s solid bulk move up beside him.
The sun was growing warmer now, and Justin looked up at it gratefully in the moment before the howling hosts of the Brigantes broke through the first line of the gate defense and came face to face with the locked shields of the Legion.
They held at first, an armor-plated wedge with its back to the inner wall, braced against the pressure on the northern and western gates. The Selgovae’s flame-haired War Lord led his tribe against the left flank, while Vortrix, among his warriors, battled foot by foot to drive the right flank back. The Primus Pilus was dead, and Justin now led the right flank, with the Legate ordering the left. The Eagle of the Legion and the cohort standards of the First, Seventh, and Eighth rode high above their heads. The front line wavered, and soon the main body of the Legion was engaged. Justin drove his pilum deep into a blue-stained body and then lost it as the man fell back and was trampled beneath the battle. He drew his sword and braced himself against the next enemy, a boy so young the spear patterns on his chest were still new and bright. He saw Favonius, trapped between two Britons, go staggering back with a spear wound in his arm, and then he too had vanished in the chaos of the battle.
The small core that was left of the Ninth Hispana was fighting with a unity Justin had never seen it show before, but although they made the British pay for every step, they were being forced steadily back by the sheer weight of numbers. The wall defenses that Geta had commanded were gone, and the whole Pictish wing of the war host was pouring in over the ramparts. A bugle cut through the tumult and the remnants of the Ninth regrouped and fell back, quickly this time, through the openings in the inner wall to take up positions in its fort-within-a-fort, a smaller and more workable defense for their dwindling numbers.
The advancing war host slowed before the closed ranks of the Legion, and for a moment there was room to breathe. Then they surged forward again, a voice that Justin thought he recognized as Vortrix’s bellowing for their deaths above the roaring of the battle.
A grey-haired warrior with a twisted torque of bronze about his neck came leaping down at him from the wall, and Justin blinked for a moment as he recognized him – Cathuil, the war paint smeared across the lines in his face, but bellowing like a bull as he leveled his great war spear at the Roman. Justin wrenched himself out of his surprise and threw up his shield just barely in time.
‘Too old for this hosting?’ Cathuil yelled as he raised his arm to strike again. ‘Puppies!’
But it was the old warrior’s last fight all the same. Justin caught the blow on his shield, and swerved under it to bring his sword up under Cathuil’s own shield. He drove it home, and the body crashed down at his feet. After that, the battle was a succession of snarling, blue-stained faces and blood-red blades… the smell of blood was everywhere, like a pall over Inchtuthil. Above them, the carrion birds rode lazy on the wind, patient observers of the final struggle.
At last, under the sheer pressure of the advancing war host, a section of new mortar in the inner wall gave way, and they flung themselves against it and poured through. The Legate drew off some of his men to cover the gap, but soon all along the line they were hacking at the stone, tearing it out bit by bit. Finally, a great section gave way and Brendan of the Selgovae leapt howling through it in the midst of his household warriors. He stood high on a pile of broken stone and his flung spear sailed with deadly aim to its goal. Aurelius Rufus, last Legate of the Ninth, staggered and went down.
And the left flank broke with the sudden crumbling of the hopeless as their general’s body touched the ground. The right flank wavered too under the added pressure, and in the space of a few moments the Britons were everywhere, and the battle of Inchtuthil was no longer a fight between two opposing armies but a chaos of small wars fought out in corners and down alleyways, wherever a little knot of Romans turned at bay.
The Eagle of the Legion also went down, landing with a crash in the mud, and its staff, thick with the Hispana’s gilded honors, lay across the Legate’s chest.
‘Look to your Eagle, damn you!’ Justin shouted, and a burly figure made a dive for the staff. ‘Hold, you rabble! Hold, and look to your Eagle!’ The figure emerged from the heaving throng, and Clemens waved the Eagle triumphantly aloft.
‘This way!’ he shouted. ‘If you break, you’re done for! This way, lads… for the Eagle… and for Rufus!’
They rallied then, what was left of them, and backed in good order down the roadway between the storage sheds and the armory. The Britons came after them, blood-smeared and howling like wolves.
They poured over the walls and roofs and down the roadways, in an ever-increasing torrent… a torrent that ran red in the sunlight. ‘Torches here, and we’ll light them on their way!’ someone yelled, and Flavius dropped his instruments and snatched up his sword. He was standing in the doorway when they reached it, his hands red with blood and his face a fury.
‘This is a hospital! Burn it and see who goes with it!’
They halted a moment at the violence in his face, and then with a howl they were on him. The hospital was a beacon flame against the sky by the time they drew back to seek other sport. Flavius lay sprawled in the doorway, his borrowed sword still clenched in his hand and his shield hacked and twisted beneath him. Ringed around him as the flames of his funeral pyre leapt sunward were six still bodies lying in pools of blood. Flavius had come to the Centuriate in the end, after all.
In a narrow alleyway beside the storage block, Justin and a half score of men turned at bay. Their pursuers, men of the Brigantes, advanced on them, and as he prepared to make them pay dearly for the privilege, Justin saw that they were Vortrix’s household guard, with the High King himself in their midst. Vortrix recognized him in the same instant.
The High King’s face was unreadable, and Justin, behind the shield wall they had stretched across the alleyway, had little time to try. He had snatched up a pilum from the ground, and made good use of it now as the first of Vortrix’s men hurled himself at the center of the line. A few feet away, Clemens, with the Eagle in one hand and his pilum in the
other, stood wedged between the shields of the men to either side. He was grinning like a fiend, and his pilum was red halfway down its shaft.
‘Look! Look to the Eagle!’ Justin yelled, and they echoed it as a battle cry down the line.
‘Look! Look to the Eagle, and sell dear!’
The man beside him went down, and they were too few to hold the gap. Vortrix was in the forefront now; blood and war paint ran together in a nightmare pattern over his white skin, and he was terrible to look on, not least about the eyes. They were vividly alive, and the light in them burned like a flame, brighter than the blood or the bright, twisted scar that ran the length of his forearm.
Beside him, shoulder to shoulder, was the charioteer, his gentle girl’s face transformed by the war paint, and his own eyes catlike and dangerous. He caught the edge of a shield with his own and yanked it toward him while his sword slipped through the gap and another man dropped. Justin shifted to close the gap and, in that instant, Vortrix’s blade came down, cleaving through the shoulder of his breastplate, and leaving it hanging loose along his side. Justin stabbed with his pilum, but there was no room to move, and the High King’s sword came in again, severing the bronze and leather fastenings over his rib cage. The other shoulder, weakened from a blow early on in the battle, gave way and the whole breastplate slipped down, tangling itself about his knees. Justin kicked at it frantically and it slid to the ground, catching his feet as he tried to step out of it. He stumbled backward through an open doorway into a deserted storeroom; his shield slipped down, and the High King’s sword flashed in the sun and bit deep just above his left breast.
Justin’s pilum clattered to the floor as he reeled back against the far wall, but somehow he drew his sword from its sheath and stood braced against the stone while the blood gushed from his breast, a brighter red against the red of his tunic. Vortrix followed but halted just past the doorway, his back well to the side of the opening. They looked at each other for a long moment as Justin methodically ripped out the hem of his tunic and bound it around his chest and shoulder.
‘I would not have had it end this way,’ Vortrix said finally.
‘Nor I,’ Justin answered, summoning up from somewhere the ghost of a smile.
Vortrix watched him settle the makeshift bandage, and there was a faint bitter smile about his own mouth as he saw the Roman pick up his sword again and then, with an effort, his shield. ‘It was for you that I carried that green branch to the Commander of the Eagles. Did you know?’
‘I knew.’
The High King still stood frozen by the doorway, a hundred miles from the shouting in the street outside. ‘I remembered that once there was a man who could not slay me while I watched him. You should have done it then,’ he added fiercely. ‘I can, you see.’ Over his shoulder, in the alleyway outside, Justin saw the Eagle topple and fall, slowly, as if the motion of the world were grinding to a halt.
‘And what price for today’s work?’ he asked softly.
‘That we take our own land again.’
‘I wonder. You see, the Legate wasn’t lying when he said there was another Army on its way. They would have been with us before we marched but for foul weather. The Sixth Legion Victrix,’ Justin added wryly. ‘I am told their title is well earned.’
‘You serve your Eagles well, Justinius. As always.’
‘No,’ Justin said sadly. ‘I am not lying either. And oddly, I have still no wish to see your head exhibited on a pilum shaft.’ He was growing faint, and he braced himself against the wall again as the High King, seeming to shake away his oddly passive mood, came forward suddenly, shield and sword at ready.
Justin somehow managed to block the first blow, although he thought he was going to topple over under its force. Vortrix’s eyes were blazing with fury now, whether at him or at the Fate which had trapped them both in this unwanted fight to the death, he couldn’t tell. But it was contagious, and it engulfed Justin too with a strength that blotted out the pain of his wound. Neither of them, locked in deadly concentration, saw Galt duck under the door frame, sword still in hand, until, as Vortrix feinted and moved in to strike, Justin brought the wicked little Roman short sword in past his guard with deadly aim, and laid the High King’s sword arm open to the bone.
Galt leapt.
‘No!’ Vortrix shouted even as he reeled back from the blow, and Galt halted in midstride. ‘No, brother. It is my battle.’
‘You are a fool!’ Galt said fiercely. ‘You are bleeding like a pig! Leave it!’
Vortrix looked for a long time at his arm, where the raw wound cut clean across the old one in an angry slash of severed flesh and muscle. The blood dripped steadily from his fingertips to the floor. ‘That makes it also my choice, does it not?’ he said.
Galt stood stock-still, his face white beneath the dust and paint. ‘You are the king,’ he whispered finally. ‘You have the right.’
Slowly Vortrix dropped his shield and took his sword in his left hand. Justin never moved until Vortrix came toward him again. Striving to push back the floating haze before his eyes, he gathered himself to meet him.
Vortrix swung his sword hard, but the blow was awkward and went wide, and the tearing pain in his arm wrenched at him as he moved. Justin, his shield arm growing wearier, struck and struck again, but he was slow and torn with pain from his own wound, and always Vortrix slipped aside or caught the blow on his blade. Neither of them knew how long they fought, each running red with blood and with a growing heaviness in their eyes. But they faced each other, reeling, and fought on.
Then, between one breath and the next it was over. This time it was Vortrix who slipped, in a pool of his own blood, and Justin saw, as if from a distance, his own blade come out and drive deep into the groin, just inside the thigh.
The High King fell. Above him, Justin stood weaving on his feet, and then sword and shield crashed on the stone, and he too went down beside the king, to lie half propped against the wall.
He was still conscious, but his breath was coming in bubbling gasps. The fury was gone now, and there was only a bone-deep weariness… for himself, for the lost Ninth, and for the dying man beside him. Vortrix’s eyes fluttered open and they looked at each other across the gap that neither could bridge. Galt, knowing that he kept a death watch, was silent. He laid his sword down and turned the High King over gently, pillowing his head on a flour sack.
‘Why?’ Justin whispered.
‘Because I was king.’
Justin closed his eyes. ‘Because I was king…’ There was a wealth of loneliness in those words. Because he was king, and it was his right not to live out his days as something less, with a shattered arm. Because no regent could rule effectively with him lingering like a spectre in the background. Because he was king…
‘Why could you not take the green branch?’ Vortrix asked after a moment.
‘It was not my choice to make.’
‘If you had been… Commander of the Eagles… would you have taken it?’
‘No.’
‘We are much alike, you and I,’ Vortrix gasped. ‘There is something… twisted in our fates… or is it only I who feel this kinship?’
‘No… there is something.’
‘And we are Death to one another… I have known it would be… thus… since I spent three nights before the Spear Lord because I… slew a kinsman.’ Vortrix’s face was chalky, and Justin, as the world grew slowly more blurry, could hardly hear him. He caught the faint, fierce whisper as if from far away. ‘There is always a price.’
The face of the god of Trimontium wavered before his eyes, and he knew that he too had known what the price would be.
‘Your people must make peace,’ he said urgently. ‘I was not… lying about the Army. There must be something left… when the war between us… is done.’
Vortrix shifted a hand and beckoned Galt closer. But he looked at Justin before he spoke. ‘Rome has never… left anything… she rides us down… and rides on…’
&nb
sp; He turned to Galt and tugged at a ring on his finger. ‘This only I kept back from the war chest, brother… it was my father’s and it… carries the kingship in the stone… take it, and look to my cub for me.’
What little fighting still went on had long since passed them by, and the grey walls of the storeroom were silent as the ancient grave mounds where the hill folk once laid their dead. Galt knelt beside him with the green stone in the center of his palm.
‘Willingly I will guard your cub, brother. But I am not of the Family.’
Vortrix’s face twisted. ‘And which of my… family… would let the cub or his mother live an hour… when I am dead?’
It was unanswerable. The harper turned the ring over in his hand once more and slipped it on his finger. ‘So. It is done.’ His eyes looked down on Vortrix as on the quenching of a fire, and the tears that slipped from them unnoticed wet his hand as he clasped it round the king’s. ‘But you must give me truly the right to rule until your cub is grown. Without it, neither he nor I will endure.’
Vortrix reached feebly for his sword, and Galt picked it up and held it while the king laid his bloody hands on the blade. ‘… to Galt my brother… the kingship of the Tribe, and the… right it carries with it… until my son shall take his place among the Spears… I, Vortrix, son of Arviragus the High King… swear it.’ His eyes fluttered shut, and Galt, knowing that Vortrix did not hear him, still gave the answer.
‘… until that day… to rule and to preserve… so I swear, Galt, who am the Hound of the Father…’
His eyes met Justin’s for a moment, darkly blue as the lakes in storm, over the body of the king. ‘The time for diplomacy comes to us all, Centurion,’ he said, and Justin knew that Galt had taken the kingship on his shoulders, and had come close to lying to his brother for the sake of what were now his people.
Justin fought for breath as the stone walls of the storeroom seemed to close around him, and then they dissolved into a grey, swirling mist where the Eagle of the Legion flew in solitary grace, light upon the wind. Somewhere behind the mist was the face of Vortrix, quiet and oddly at rest, as Galt gently wiped away the blood and paint. Justin tried to push away the fog to see it, but it closed in around him, thick and choking. In a single ray of sunlight, the Eagle flicked his wing and was gone, and then there was only grey oblivion.
The Legions of the Mist Page 34