Eukairios returned from Londinium next morning, in a good blue tunic and a checked cloak fastened with a fine bronze pin; he looked much more respectable and seemed very much more cheerful. We struck camp and continued north toward Eburacum.
For all my forebodings, the journey passed peacefully. Shamed by Eukairios’ earnest attempts to learn Sarmatian, the bodyguard asked him to help them with their Latin-they all spoke the language a little, but none spoke it well. Every evening they would sit about the fire cross-legged, mending and cleaning their weapons and their armor, while the scribe pretended that they were visiting a dairy, or an armorer’s, or a horse trader’s, and got them to say the appropriate phrases. Before we reached Eburacum they had all forgiven him for being a blot on my reputation, and Banadaspos had grown sufficiently friendly to begin to teach him riding. Eukairios had no gift for it at all, and rather puzzled Banadaspos by the number of times he fell off.
At Eburacum, where we once again camped outside the city, a couple of my men did quarrel with a couple of Gatalas’, but they fought their duels quietly with blunted weapons, and a broken arm was the worst injury endured on either side. I managed to avoid any private meeting with the legate’s lady, and was relieved to escape her. She would remain in the fortress with her husband while I continued to my posting on the Wall.
Arshak was, predictably, furious when he understood that he and his company were to remain in Eburacum, particularly when he gathered that the greatest chance of action was farther north. But his liaison officer managed to soothe him with murmurs about a possible posting elsewhere, in time, and Bodica smiled at him, and in the end, even he accepted it quietly.
The division of our companies happened almost too casually, seeing that we’d journeyed so far together and were such a long way from home. “After all,” Gatalas and I said to Arshak, when we parted in Eburacum, “we’ll be only a few days’ ride to the north, and under the same commander in chief. We’ll meet often.”
“After all,” Gatalas and I said to each other, when we reached the supply base of Corstopitum a few days later, “we’ll be only a day’s ride from each other’s camps. We’ll have to meet for hunting trips, or let our dragons compete at mounted games.” And he and his dragon turned east to Condercum, while I and mine turned west toward Cilurnum, and I never saw him again.
It was just my own dragon and the two Roman officers, Comittus and Facilis, who trotted the last few miles along the old road from Corstopitum, late in the afternoon of a golden day of late September. We went up the valley of the Tinea River-pleasant, rolling country, with patches of woodland; the trees were beginning to turn, and the blackberries beside the road were ripe. Northward we would sometimes get a glimpse of the uplands of Caledonia, purple with heather and spotted with sheep; cattle and horses grazed contentedly on the richer grass of the valley. At the place where the Tinea forks, one branch running from west to east along the valley, and the other descending to it from the north, we turned northward from the old road toward the new military way, and almost at once came to the Wall. Three times the height of a man, built of a golden sandstone, it strode off east and west as far as we could see. It crossed the river on top of a bridge that was built of the same stone and ran directly into the walls of Cilurnum. I stopped, looking at the fort, and Comittus and Facilis, who were riding beside me on the road, stopped too. Behind us, the drummer gave the signal to halt.
“That’s the bathhouse,” said Comittus, pointing at a building just outside the fort by the river. He’d visited the place before. “It’s a good one. The water’s good at Cilurnum, too-there’s an aqueduct that carries it right through the camp from end to end, and flushes the latrines. And there’s a water mill under the bridge, which grinds all the grain for the fort…” He coughed. “If you want grain, that is.”
I nodded. My heart had risen at the sight of Cilurnum. The fort itself was the standard affair: a rectangular wall, four gates, watchtowers. I knew that inside it there would be the usual two main streets, the usual headquarters building and commandant’s house facing each other in the center, and the usual narrow barrack blocks laid out in neat grids. It was, I knew, more than half-empty. It had been manned by an auxiliary ala, the Second Asturian Horse, but most of them had been posted elsewhere, and there were only some five squadrons remaining. A village of the kind found around every Roman fort sprawled messily to the south. But the fort’s setting beside the shallow brown river was beautiful, and to its north there were meadows-lush, intensely green, dotted with large trees. “We can put the wagons there,” I said, pointing to them.
Comittus and Facilis both looked at me, Comittus in surprise and Facilis in exasperation. “You won’t need the wagons anymore,” Comittus told me. “You know yourself that all the letters have been written and everything’s arranged. The Second Asturian Horse have left plenty of space in the barracks for you and them both.”
“You’re going to have to start sleeping in houses sometime, Ariantes,” said Facilis. “We can’t have Roman auxiliaries parked in wagons behind their own fort. Particularly not on the wrong side of the Wall.”
I set my teeth, looking at the stone walls. I thought of sleeping in them, night after night. I thought of watching the seasons change, fixed in the same place, unmoving, buried like the dead. I had known that the Romans would expect us to follow their ways now, that they would ride us, as the saying is, with the curb bit and the iron bridle. Facilis was going to be in charge of the ordering of the camp, and the remaining Asturians were subordinate to Comittus. There were thousands of Roman troops in the region, more than enough to put down any mutiny. But this change was too great and too sudden, and as I looked from the walls back to my companions, I felt all at once certain that it was not something I had to bear. Comittus and Facilis might use force against us for many reasons-but this wasn’t one of them.
“Not tonight,” I said. “Not yet.” I snapped my fingers for the drummer to give the signal and started Farna forward again. The drums rattled, and the dragon began clattering and jingling after me.
“But… really… I mean…” said Comittus, spurring after us, “barracks are much more comfortable… ”
They did not give up easily. We rode into the fort-we had to, to get to the fields, since the Wall cut us off from them. There the senior decurion of the remaining squadrons of the Second Asturian Horse came hurrying to meet us, followed by his men and most of the inhabitants of the village. (Despite their name, the Asturians were not from Asturica in Iberia; their ala had been raised there originally, but that had been a long time ago, and they themselves were mostly born in the village.) The decurion was a mournful-looking dark man of about my own age, named Gaius Flavinus Longus-I strongly suspected that “Longus” was a nickname, as he was one of the tallest and thinnest men I’d seen. Comittus and Facilis rushed the polite greetings and at once enlisted his help to explain to me why we couldn’t sleep in our wagons. He had put a considerable amount of work into getting the barracks ready for us, and argued more hotly than either of the others. I nodded, ignored them all, and took the men out the other gate of the fort into the fields. The three Roman officers, with most of the Asturians and villagers, followed us, exclaiming in amazement at our obstinate savagery.
“You bastards don’t even entrench!” Facilis shouted at me, while I held Farna in the place I’d chosen for the main fire and waved the wagons round. “Listen, Ariantes, you’ll have the damned villagers in and out of here every hour of the day and night, and half of them are thieves! And what are you going to do about latrines?”
“Lend us a few shovels, and we’ll dig a spur from the ones in the fort,” I replied, not looking at him.
“You’re entitled to the commandant’s house, you know,” Comittus coaxed. “At least, we could share it. It’s a big house, and it has a hypocaust and a private bath-house with a steam room, and the last man there put in a very fine floor on the dining room…”
“Comittus,” I said, “when I was in my own country and a prince, I did not have a big house with a mosaic floor. I do not need or want one now. Perhaps in the winter, if it is very cold, barracks and hypocausts may seem worthwhile. Not tonight.”
“May I perish!” exclaimed Longus, exasperated at seeing all his preparations for us laid waste. “What sort of people have they sent us?”
I looked at him. “They have sent you Sarmatians,” I told him. “We are accustomed to live in wagons.”
“They’ve sent us a pack of raving lunatics! Who else would prefer filthy carts to good stone barracks blocks? Oh, now I know what the problem is! You’ve mistaken Cilurnum for the madhouse you escaped from!”
The Asturians, and the villagers, laughed. My men heard it. They interpreted the comment to each other. I noticed Facilis’ face losing its red, swollen look as he became alarmed. He had called us similar things, and worse-but he was a senior officer, and knew exactly how far he could go, and in what circumstances. He would never have used language like that in front of an audience that understood.
I looked at Longus thoughtfully. He’d climbed onto his horse to greet us, and he was armed and wearing a shirt of mail. But he was off guard. “You should not insult us, Flavinus Longus,” I told him quietly. “Remember we must work together.” I raised my hand to keep my men still.
“I can say what I li-” began Longus.
Farna leapt sideways at a touch of my heel, and I swept my lance out and across to knock the decurion off his mount backwards. I turned my horse almost on top of him, and drove the point of the lance into the earth about two inches from his shoulder. By the time he’d recoiled from it, I had my sword out and at his throat. “No killing!” I shouted in Sarmatian. It had been sudden enough that the Asturians were all still gaping, and my men had not yet tried anything on their own. But I could hear the sound of the bows being strung behind me.
“You should not insult us,” I told Longus again. He looked up the sword blade into my eyes. His face had gone gray. “If you ask Marcus Flavius Facilis, he will tell you how we deal with those who insult us. You should not have said that, on first meeting us, in front of all your men and mine. It was foolish. But I am sure you would not have said it if you knew us better, and you regret it now.” I took my sword away from his throat and put it back in its sheath, then pulled my lance up and backed Farna away.
Longus picked himself up, still looking gray. One of my men had caught his mount, and I nodded for it to be returned. It was probably just as well we’d had a small, manageable incident of this kind. The Asturians had obviously needed to have it pointed out to them that it was dangerous to speak to Sarmatians as they would to Romans. I was sorry to have humiliated Longus, but at least he was junior to me and would have to admit to himself, when he’d calmed down, that he should not have used that tone to the commander of another unit, however stupidly he thought I was behaving.
“We swore to the emperor that we would fight for him,” I told the Romans. “We did not swear to sleep in tombs. We must already learn to patrol and guard, to stay in one place, to use money. We must learn another language and another way of life. This we can and will do. Flavius Facilis, we can build a palisade, if you want to keep people out of our camp; we can make adjustments. But you must forbear a little.”
They gave in, though Facilis still muttered darkly about latrines, and we parked the wagons in the field, loosed the horses, and settled down into a new life.
The first months we spent in Cilurnum were all I could have hoped for: quiet and monotonous. All my forebodings about trouble in the North seemed utterly misplaced. We could test the shape of our new position with very little to disturb us. The legate had given orders that the men were not to leave the fort-which we interpreted to mean not just the fort itself, but the village and fields attached to it-without the permission of the camp prefect. This was a measure to control us and protect the civilians of the region, but I was glad of it: it gave us a chance to learn the customs of the land before we entered it.
The chief business of the fort was the collection of tolls. Cilurnum was the official crossing point for neighboring people with business on the other side of the Wall, and it also provided the main bridge over the north Tinea River. Every day a trickle of shepherds drove flocks through the gates, and on market days there would be a crowd of carts, all paying their copper to the men on duty to be allowed to cross.
The fort was also responsible for manning six mile-castles-small fortlets that were built every mile along the Wall. The milecastles, in turn, manned the watchtowers, where the sentries could sit watching the sheep on the hills northward. We sent men out to the milecastles for ten days at a time, and rotated them squadron by squadron. The squadrons not on watch were assigned chores about the camp-though these generally did not take up much time, once the work of building a palisade for our camp and digging latrines had been finished. I suggested to Facilis and Comittus that we buy some flocks and herds of our own, which would not only keep us supplied with meat, milk, and woolens, but also give the men something more to do. I was told that Roman soldiers were not allowed to herd or farm the land. Instead, one had to invent work for them-drilling, extra patrols, competitions. It seemed ridiculous to me, but I had to go along with it, if only to keep my dragon from squabbling with the Asturians.
If my men weren’t very busy, I was, and quarrels with the Asturians were the chief thing that occupied me. The Asturians, my troops reckoned, were perfect to quarrel with, much better than Gatalas’ men. Their spears were shorter, they couldn’t shoot, they didn’t wear nearly as much armor, and they weren’t as skillful on horseback as we were: they were opponents who could reliably be beaten. My men were soon swaggering at the very sight of the poor auxiliaries. It was amazing how little Latin they needed to start a fight. And there was trouble, as I’d anticipated, with drink and women-the fort village had a collection of taverns and two brothels. Still, it could have been worse. The Asturians were so clumsy that no one actually needed to kill them, and I was allowed to impose punishments on my followers myself, rather than yield them to the Asturians for floggings and forced marches. I explained to the men that this would change if the Romans thought they were out of control, but even so I had a constant struggle to keep the most imperfect peace. I had to disgrace some of my men by taking back gifts I had given them and bestowing them instead on the Romans they’d injured, and one man I had to dismiss from my bodyguard for provoking trouble.
Longus was better at it than I was. Despite his mournful appearance, he had a keen sense of humor, and he told jokes against himself with a straight face and toneless voice that had his friends roaring. When I was faced with a quarrel, I could only give orders or administer justice: if he got to a quarrel in time, it dissolved in laughter instead of blows. Far from holding a grudge against me for knocking him off his horse the first time we met, he turned the incident into one of his favorite stories: “Next thing I knew, I’d fallen from my mare’s rump like a lump of manure, and Ariantes sticks the spear he did it with next to my neck, chunk! and looks along his sword at me with an expression on his face like he’s considering what bit to chop off first. I thought my last hour had come. Oh gods and goddesses, I thought to myself, get me out of this one and I’ll never say a word against carts again, so help me Epona, goddess of horseflesh. And then he says, very reasonable and soft-spoken, ‘You should not have insulted us,’ and you know? I couldn’t agree with him more; I want to nod, like that, but there’s this sword at my throat, and I’m worried a nod will have consequences, if you take my meaning..”
I learned very quickly to value Longus. In fact, I liked all the men I worked with at Cilurnum, except Facilis, and even he no longer quarreled with me. Comittus had been friendly from the first, and once he’d agreed to take the commandant’s house and leave me in my wagon, we got on well. Bouncy and inexperienced he might have been, but he was able and intelligent underneath it, and understood what the British were thinking far better than the rest of us.
After the first month or so, I sent Eukairios to live in the slaves’ quarters of the commandant’s house, as it was clear from his wistful look every time we left it that he far preferred stone walls to a wagon now that the winter was drawing in. Leimanos was unhappy with this: though he now quite liked the scribe, he still didn’t trust him. “I think he is loyal to you in his own way, my prince,” he told me, “but he’s a slave, with a slave’s courage. If the Romans order him to, he’ll tell them anything he knows.” But I wanted Eukairios to be content in my service. Besides, there were no secrets in the work I gave him: all the letters I had him write were to Romans. He had made an inventory of the goods I’d brought with me in my wagon, and reported that I had enough to buy the goodwill of the administration with plenty left in reserve, so we set out to arrange pay and conditions for the men to my liking, and distributed gold by the handful. In this I relied on Eukairios absolutely. He had an astonishing memory. Our language was his fourth, and he mastered it in only a few months and learned everything there was to know about the northern army at the same time. He knew who were the best officials to write to about what, and how much one should give them to make them friendly. I was satisfied at Cilurnum that autumn, despite the dragon’s quarrels with the ala. But that satisfaction was shattered by Gatalas.
It was a chill, damp day early in December when I heard the news, and we’d had one of the ridiculous competitions. We’d divided into teams, with some Sarmatians and some Asturians on each team in the hope that this would reconcile them to one another, and played a game that involved much cantering about in full armor and the mud, hurling blunted spears-casting javelins was about the only thing the Asturians could do better than us. Now the men had gone off to steam away the mud and cold in the public bathhouse, and the senior officers were doing the same in the commandant’s bathhouse. Comittus and Longus sprawled along the benches; Leimanos, Banadaspos, and one of my captains, the dragon’s priest Kasagos, whom I’d brought with me, sat cross-legged with their eyes half-shut against the heat. (Leimanos and Banadaspos usually came on such occasions, and Kasagos’ squadron had distinguished itself in the game.) Facilis sat off to one side, elbows on knees, squat and silent. He had become the one who was out of place now, an aging foot soldier among the young cavalry officers, and he usually bathed, left, and went home before the rest of us. The exercise had gone well, and we were all tired but pleased.
“We ought to finish up the day with a few drinks,” said Longus. “Or even a few drinks and a bit of action. Fortunatus has a couple of new girls.”
“Any good?” asked Comittus.
Longus rolled his eyes. “I like the Greek. Trufosa, she’s called. Little and dainty and hot as pepper-or so they say. I haven’t been honored yet. You ought to go, Ariantes. Fortunatus has said that if you come, you can have any girl you like, for free.”
“So that my men will go to his brothel rather than the other one?”
“I doubt it. They’re not short of Sarmatian custom as it is. Every time I’ve been in there recently, the place has been full of drunks weeping into their wine as they tell the girls about the beautiful horses they had to leave behind.” He clasped an imaginary cup in both hands, looked more mournful than ever, and began lamenting a lost horse in extravagant terms and a wickedly accurate Sarmatian accent. Kasagos and Leimanos laughed. Longus rolled his eyes, sighed deeply, and declared, still in a Sarmatian voice, “I miss my vife sometime, too.” Banadaspos, who hadn’t found the lament funny, realized at this that it was a joke, and laughed too. “No,” continued Longus, in his own voice now, “Fortunatus just wants to give his place a bit of class. Patronized by princes and senior officers! But a couple of the girls have said they’d be delighted to oblige you any time. Lupicilla still goes into floods of giggles at the thought of you knocking me off my horse. You really ought to come.”
I looked at him tolerantly. “Thank you, thank Fortunatus, no.”
If the goddess of love herself had appeared to me, naked and golden and smelling of myrrh, I would have fallen on my knees before her and begged her to give me Tirgatao. I wanted, I wanted desperately, but a man who’s parched with thirst cannot eat bread.
The door to the steam room opened suddenly, and Eukairios came in. “My lord,” he said to me, “may I speak to you a moment?”
I gestured for him to sit, but he remained standing. He glanced at the door, which he was holding open. I got up and went toward the changing room to get my clothes.
Facilis picked his head up. “What is it?” he asked suspiciously.
“A piece of news, Lord Facilis,” Eukairios answered politely. “If I may just speak with my master…”
“Wait a minute, man. If it’s so important it can’t wait until your master’s out of the steam room, it’s important enough that the rest of us need to hear it too.”
Eukairios looked at me nervously. “What has happened?” I asked him.
He shook his head and closed the door. “In the post this evening there was a letter for me from… from a correspondent of mine in Corstopitum. It said… I am sorry, my lord. Your friend Lord Gatalas is dead.”
“Dead?” I asked, in horror. “How?”
“In a mutiny against the authorities,” Eukairios admitted miserably. “Apparently, two days ago he quarreled with the camp prefect of Condercum and with his liaison officer. He turned them out of the fort, so they went at once to the neighboring forts, collected troops, and marched back to Condercum. He came out of the fort this morning with just his bodyguard, thirty-two men. They thought that he wanted to negotiate with them-but he’d come out to die. He’d ordered the rest of his dragon in Condercum to surrender, but rode out to battle himself. He and the thirty-two killed four times their number, including the camp prefect, before they were killed themselves. The rest of his men have surrendered and are under arrest in Condercum.”
“Marha!” I whispered. I bowed my head, blinking at it: Gatalas dead.
“Why didn’t anyone tell us?” cried Leimanos, jumping furiously to his feet.
“Don’t be stupid!” snapped Facilis. “It was over in two days. And no one would tell you anyway. You’d have gone to help him. A hundred and twenty Roman soldiers dead. Gods and goddesses! I tried to tell them!”
I went out into the changing room and began to put my clothes on. “Leimanos,” I said, “we need to summon all the men.”
“What do you think you’re going to do?” asked Facilis, pushing his way out after me.
“You think it better that they hear this in the taverns?” I asked, fastening my muddy trousers. I picked up my shirt and glared at the centurion. “You need have no fear, Flavius Facilis. I will not throw away the lives of my men chasing vengeance. As for Gatalas, he revenged himself.” I pulled the shirt over my head.
“Revenged himself for what?” demanded Facilis. “For being sent to a cavalry fort in pleasant country, well fed, well housed, well paid? A hundred and twenty Romans dead! And most likely because of a few words!”
“It needed forbearance!” I returned. “He was willing to keep his oaths if he could trust his commanders.” I sat down and pulled my boots on. Banadaspos was weeping as he did the same; Kasagos was muttering a prayer for the dead; Leimanos was dangerously silent. “Eukairios, as soon as I’ve spoken to the men, we need to write some letters.”
Eukairios coughed. “The letter that told me this… it came with some dispatches. They arrived by special courier. That’s why I had to see you at once.”
For a moment I couldn’t think what he meant. Then I understood: the dispatches had included orders to Comittus, Longus, and Facilis to arrest me, disarm my men, and confine us all to camp.
I turned to the Romans. “If the dispatches tell you to do anything,” I whispered, “do not do it yet! Please. Give me a chance to calm things down. Longus, if my men hear of this in the taverns, they will set on yours and there will be bloodshed. I need to assemble the dragon and speak to them all tonight. Tomorrow morning we can sacrifice to Marha and read the divining rods, and also pray for our friends’ souls. After that you can do what you like. The men will be steadier and will not do anything foolish.”
The three others were silent for a long moment. Then Longus said, “We weren’t going to read the dispatches tonight-were we, Comittus?”
“No,” agreed Comittus, understanding at once, “no-we’ve had a tiring day, and it’s getting late. We were planning to have a few drinks and get some rest.”
“And we can’t open them tomorrow morning, either,” Longus continued. “If you’re having some ceremony to worship the gods, obviously we ought to join in. The dispatches can wait until lunchtime.”
I looked at Facilis.
“May the gods destroy those dispatches!” he said. “I’m certainly not reading them tonight. I’m going straight to bed.”
“I thank you all,” I said, warmly, then grabbed my coat and hurried out into the chill dampness of the night to assemble my men.
When the drums had dragged them from the bathhouse, taverns, and brothels of Cilurnum, they heard the news with groans of dismay and wails of grief. There were no shouts of anger, though, and the promise of a sacrifice in the morning, and the chance of reconciling everything with the will of the gods, reassured them. They went to bed reminding each other that the divining rods had promised Gatalas death in battle, but had offered them, and Gatalas’ dragon, life and prosperity. I was aware, during the night, that the Asturians were mounting a guard on the fort walls overlooking our wagons-but it was unobtrusive enough that no one was offended.
We were woken before dawn by the sound of trumpets in the fort sounding the call to arms. I rushed out of my wagon, jumped on the nearest horse without bothering to saddle it, and galloped wildly up to the gate, cursing silently. I was sure that the Romans must have decided to read the dispatches after all, and I was afraid of the consequences. But as I reached the north gate, Comittus’ messenger came rushing out of it. “Lord Ariantes!” he shouted, waving his arms so that my horse reared up and put its ears back. “Lord Ariantes, the tribune wants you to come at once! And give the numerus the signal to arm! The barbarians have crossed the Wall!”
It was very strange, setting out with Roman troops to catch a party of barbarian raiders. I had imagined it before-the raising of the alarm, the rush to arms, the gallop across country in what was hoped to be the right direction, the snippets of news gained from frightened shepherds or farmers, and finally the moment when you crest a hill and see the enemy there beyond you. I had imagined it because I was curious to know what it must be like for them, my opponents. Living it for myself was so like what I had anticipated that it felt unreal, as though I were imagining it again.
The signal fires told us to go east; the shepherds and farmers we questioned told us that there were “thousands” of the raiders. We left the road and moved across the hills to the north, sending out scouts to locate the enemy. In fact, we might have dispensed with their services: the enemy made no effort to conceal themselves. We arrived at the town of Corstopitum, the principal town of the region, to find it overrun. It was the beginning of December, a dull gray day, but not too cold: we stopped at the edge of a slate-colored wood and looked down at a city surrounded, smoking here and there with fires.
Corstopitum had been built as an army fort to control the bridge over the Tinea River, where the main road north meets the main road west. The fort was decommissioned when the Wall was built just north of it, then recommissioned for use as a supply base: in the time between the two events, the thriving city had grown so much that the old fort had been swallowed up, and the new one had to be laid out as two irregular enclosures on either side of the main road north, instead of the neat rectangle used everywhere else. The bridge was now held by a large party of invading cavalry-we could see the gleam of their whitewashed shields-and the fort appeared to be under attack: the fires were concentrated about it, and the marketplace before it was full of armed men.
Longus, who had been riding beside me, groaned. “They’re after our pay,” he said.
It seemed that the quarterly pay for all the men stationed at all the forts along the eastern Wall was distributed from Corstopitum, and that this huge sum of money was almost certainly inside the besieged fortress. The garrison at Corstopitum was an auxiliary ala called the First Thracians, a part-mounted force of five hundred men. It could be assumed that the number of the raiders was at least twice as great, or they would not have attacked at all.
Comittus bit his lip and struggled to control his horse. He had been pale and feverish with excitement during the ride, and his mood had communicated itself to his flashy black stallion, which was snorting and fighting with the bit. “There hasn’t been a raid this big for years and years,” he said unhappily.
Facilis snorted. “A quarter’s pay for four thousand men’s a tempting target. I doubt they meant to fight us as well as the Thracians for it, though.”
One of my scouts galloped up and drew rein. “They are all in the town, my prince,” he announced. “They have a detachment on the bridge, to prevent the townspeople from escaping, but no one in the hills.”
No danger of a flank attack. Comittus had said that the Picts were in general lightly armed, and that their leaders tended to be jealous of one another, so that their fighting was disorganized. I judged that whatever their number might be, the enemy could not overwhelm us. I consulted the Romans on the order of battle, and then gave the signal.
The drums rattled and the dragon divided in two, eight squadrons to the left of the Asturians, eight to the right. Then the beat slowed to the steady one-two rhythm of the walk, and we rode out from the shelter of the trees and started down the hill.
The Picts noticed us quickly and began to pour out of the town. They didn’t want to be caught in the narrow streets, trapped between us and the Corstopitum garrison. I kept our pace slow: I didn’t want to fight inside the town either. The enemy grouped themselves into irregular squadrons along the road facing us. They began to beat their spears against their shields and give hawklike screams. They were indeed lightly armed-spears, swords, and wooden shields that had been whitewashed or painted in bright colors. Only a few of them wore mail, and not one in a hundred had a helmet. They wore the same kind of gray-brown tunics and trousers and the same checked cloaks as I’d seen on the shepherds who crossed the Wall to go to market, but as we drew nearer I noticed that they’d covered their faces with the blue and green war paint that had given them the name “Picts.” There were too many of them to count-eight, nine hundred? — and then the first wave moved forward, and more Picts came from the city, and more.
I raised my right hand, and the half-dragons swung out, spreading across the hill to cut off the Picts’ retreat. The drumbeat quickened, sounding sharp and high above the growing thunder of the hooves. The trumpets of the Asturians rang out, and they halted in the middle of the road, their red and white standard waving.
From within Corstopitum, more trumpets answered, faint with distance. The First Thracian Cohort was hurrying to join its unexpected reinforcements.
The Picts began advancing directly up the road toward the Asturians, obviously preferring them to us. The Asturians remained motionless, spears leveled-waiting, as we had agreed. I raised my hand once more, and the drumbeat quickened again: we began to trot down toward the Picts at an angle. The long tail of our standard twisted in the wind behind me, crimson and gold. The beat quickened still more, and the horses broke into a canter, into a gallop. We shouted our own war cry: “Marha! Marha!” with one deep voice, and drew our bows from their cases, setting the arrows to the string.
The Picts knew nothing about mounted archers. When we veered away from them, they began to hoot and jeer in triumph, believing, I suppose, that their numbers and their paint had frightened us off. Then the arrows struck, and the jeers turned abruptly into screams of pain and consternation. We galloped past them on both sides, shooting; some of the Picts hurled javelins back, but at that range these were useless against armored enemies, while our arrows found easy targets in the raiders’ unarmored legs and sides. Their advance foundered, collapsing in a sea of dead and injured men and horses. The trumpets of the Asturians rang out, and they rolled forward. I drew rein and waved the men around, putting away my bow and pulling out and lowering my spear. I felt an unfamiliar dread as its weight came down into my hand. There was no glory in this contest. It was simple slaughter.
The Picts were brave men. They struggled to regroup themselves, to settle their shields on their arms, to gather up the reins, lower the spear, all the while we swept down on them. The same instinct that informed me must have told them that they were facing death-but they faced it with unaltered courage. The Asturians struck them first, but lightly: they clashed, halted, horses rearing, men fighting. Then our charge caught them on both sides, and they went under like a nest of field voles sliced open by the plow. We galloped over them, killing with the lance and the long sword and trampling the corpses underfoot. When we drew rein and turned again on the other side of the field, the remaining Picts flung themselves off their horses and begged for mercy. The First Thracians, hurrying up from the city behind them, were too late to do anything except secure the prisoners and bury the dead.
The aftermath of the battle was unreal. I sat on my horse among the Roman officers and watched as the barbarians were disarmed, bound, and led off. There had been about eighteen hundred of them, of whom half were now dead. My men busily stripped the corpses of valuables and, of course, scalps. I told myself that I was doing nothing more than honoring the bargain my people made at Aquincum, but I was revolted at it and at myself. I had fought in a great many battles, from the first, when I was fourteen and rode with the archers, to the Thundering Defeat, but the battle against the Pictish raiders at Corstopitum was the most pitiful affair I ever took part in. We might have dispensed with the arrows altogether and taken them with the cavalry charge alone. I was accustomed, though, to using a force of mounted archers at least twice as large as my armored troops, and didn’t like the idea of employing no archery at all. Besides, we hadn’t been sure of the enemy’s numbers, and the arrows could have covered a retreat.
The prefect of the First Thracian Cohort of Corstopitum was elated, and told us several times that it was the biggest raid he’d ever seen, and that he hadn’t expected anyone to come help him in time. He thanked the gods that Comittus, Facilis, and Longus hadn’t read the dispatches that ordered them to arrest me and disarm all my men. When I finally got the chance to put a word in, I told him that I wished to go to Condercum and speak to Gatalas’ men. The thought of them, lordless, disarmed, and imprisoned, had been weighing heavy on my mind.
“I’m sure the legate will arrange it as soon as he arrives,” the prefect replied. “We sent him the news by fast courier when the trouble started.” (By “trouble” he meant the mutiny, not the raid: he was being tactful.) “I’m sure he’ll come himself in a few days. I’ll put it to him then, Lord Ariantes.”
“I would like to see them earlier, if that is possible,” I said.
He gave me an unhappy look, and I saw that I wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near Condercum until the legate had arrived with more Roman troops. “I’ll write Condercum about it,” the prefect promised, to pacify me.
The prefect invited us to spend the night in Corstopitum, and was taken aback when Comittus told him that my men wouldn’t sleep in barracks. “The Sarmatians at Condercum do,” he said in surprise. We declined to squeeze in beside his own men, and rode back to Cilurnum. Comittus rode in silence most of the way. When we turned north along the river, I saw that he was crying.
“Had you never seen a battle before?” I asked him quietly. He had been very white and silent since it ended.
He shook his head. “No. Oh gods! Was it that obvious?”
“Not so very much. Nearly all men are nervous beforehand. But if they have seen war before, they are less dismayed afterward.”
He sniffed. “I’d never realized… and… damn it, Ariantes, you know what they’re going to do with the prisoners we took?”
“The arenas?” I asked. That was what the Romans had always done with their Sarmatian prisoners.
He nodded. “Damn it! Poor wretches. I know they started it, but poor, miserable men.” He looked up and met my eyes. “You probably don’t have any idea what it looked like. Gods and goddesses, you were like… like those reaping machines they use in the South. No, like meat grinders. Nothing human, anyway. Sweeping down on those poor miserable savages, chopping them up, and trampling over them while they screamed. It was horrible!”
“Yes. Who were they?”
He rubbed his face. “Mostly Selgovae. I recognized the emblems of a couple of their chiefs. And some Votadini-they were the ones with the hawk emblem painted on their faces. And that’s an odd thing: the southern Votadini don’t usually cooperate with the Selgovae. They’ve fought a lot in the past, and they have so many blood debts back and forth that they can hardly make a truce even when they want to.”
I was silent for a minute. “It was an odd thing in many ways. They must have known that there was… trouble in the Roman camp.”
He gave me a look I couldn’t interpret. “They did know,” he said, after a pause and in a whisper. “I heard them talking about it as the Thracians were tying them up and taking them off. But…” And he lowered his voice still further, so that I had to lean half off my horse and strain my ears to hear it. “But I don’t see how they could have gathered their forces in time, particularly with all those blood feuds to settle-unless they knew about it before it happened.”
“Perhaps there was trouble earlier, which we did not hear about,” I said, after a pause. “As Facilis said, we are the last people who would be informed of trouble in Condercum.”
“By Maponus! That’s true!” exclaimed Comittus, brightening. There had clearly been another possibility that had worried him before. I suspected it myself, but in a vague way, not happy with details. I was quite certain that Gatalas wouldn’t have been able to coordinate his mutiny with an invasion even if he’d wanted to: we were all of us too alien to this world to play its factions. But then, Gatalas’ mutiny didn’t sound planned at all: it had the feel of a desperate gesture undertaken to revenge his honor. Why? What had happened? Plainly he had been forced to bow lower to Roman discipline than I had, if he’d been obliged to use barracks. But that would not have been enough to make him resort to mutiny. He’d swallowed Facilis’ insults all the way from Aquincum and had only threatened to rebel at the ocean crossing because he thought it a death trap. He’d hoped for glory in war, for a battle like the one I’d just fought. And still, he must have had some residual faith in the Romans, or he would not have ordered his men to surrender when he rode out with his bodyguard to die.
Danger from lies, the rods had warned in Bononia. I suspected, though still vaguely, that someone had lied to Gatalas, someone with contacts among the Pictish tribes-and from Comittus’ unhappiness I guessed that the same thought had crossed his mind as well. And without details, without proof, like a man listening to echoes in the darkness, I wondered if the legate would bring his lady with him when he came from Eburacum.