Utter silence held the watching throng. The only sounds in Alexios’s world were the ring and rasp of blade on blade that sent a tingling jar all up the sword arm, the pad of their own feet on snow that was becoming every moment more slippery as it was beaten down, the whistling of breath snatched through half-open mouth and flaring nostrils. Weariness was creeping back upon him; his guard wavered for an instant; and in that instant Cunorix’s sword leapt from nowhere in a vicious down-cut, and before he could spring clear, shored away the outer edge of his buckler and seemed to grate against his shield arm leaving a wake of white fire from shoulder to elbow.
There was a stirring among the men behind him, and from the tribesmen a roar of ‘Second blood!’
The light skin-covered wicker shield became suddenly as heavy as though it were made of forged iron; and something warm and sticky was running down inside it, making the strap slip on his forearm as he heaved it upward and pressed in with his own answering blade.
There was red on the snow now in good earnest, making it yet more slippery underfoot; and he knew that if he was going to win this fight he must do it quickly, before the strength went out of him. There seemed to be a flicker of cold iron all about him; his own blade and his enemy’s, scoring a kind of bright and deadly tracery upon the air. The snow whirling in the torchlight had begun to make a dizzying dance that spun at the corners of his eyes. He gathered himself and got in a powerful side-swing and felt his blade bite Cunorix’s thigh below his shield guard. Then as Cunorix lunged wildly in reply, he sprang sideways to avoid the thrust, and his feet went from under him on the treacherous mingling of blood and hard-packed snow, and he went crashing down.
He twisted over, covering himself as best he could with what was left of his buckler, and as Cunorix’s blade swept down, flung himself sideways and stabbed upward beneath the other’s shield, and felt the hard-driven point go in under the breastbone.
The Chieftain’s sword flew wide in mid-stroke, and with a defiant yell that ended in a horrible choking sound, he crumped on top of the man who had been his friend and heart-companion.
Alexios felt him twitch once, and lie still. He dragged himself out from under the dead weight and lurched to his feet, aware of a roaring like a wild sea in his ears. And slamming his reddened sword back into its sheath, he stooped and turned the other onto his back. He lay hacked and twisted, a red gash gaping to the bone of his thigh, the jagged hole under his breastbone oozing out a soggy blackness. Even so, Alexios thought that he was still alive; but a mass of blood and vomit came out of his mouth, and it was only the streaming torchlight as men crowded closer that flickered in his eyes and made them seem to move.
There had begun to be words in the sea-roaring; someone shouting, ‘Kill! Kill!’ But he had already killed his friend.
‘Kill! Kill! Though the sun be down, I, Morvidd can guide you beyond the sunset. Kill! Kill! Kill!’
He tried to pick up his shield, but his arm was numb and dripping red. Red everywhere on the snow, his own blood and Cunorix’s mingled. And glancing down he saw his leather sleeve slashed away, and a long gash that snaked down his upper arm, laying bare the bone.
Hazily he was aware of a rush of shadows, and fighting all about him. Hands were on him, the hands of his own men, dragging him back towards the narrow gap in the barricade. And then he was inside, and men were heaving the timbers back into place. He was sitting on the ground and somebody was jabbing the neck of a leather bottle against his teeth, while somebody else lashed a strip of filthy cloth about his arm. He managed to stop his teeth juddering, and swallowed. Some of the barley spirit ran down his chin and some down his throat. It burned like fire, but started his head clearing, so that awareness of what was happening all around came back to him.
A savage struggle was going on all the length of the breastwork and the barricade; and still, above the tumult and the howling of war-cries and the weapon-ring and the plunging and neighing of frightened ponies, he could hear that terrible long-drawn bloodshriek of the Oak Priest. ‘Kill! Kill! Kill!’
A leaden despair crushed down on him. He’d failed, then. He’d played his desperate game for time; he’d held them off until the last light went, banking on the surety that the Votadini would not attack in the dark; and they were attacking in the dark after all, sicked on and maddened by that accursed priest and maybe by the Painted People who were with them. They were breaking their Chieftain’s promise and their Chieftain’s honour with it.
‘It was a good try, Sir,’ somebody shouted in his ear.
He found that he was on his feet again, lurching back into the thick of things. At full pitch of his lungs he raised the Wolf Cry, and heard it caught up all about him. He saw Morvidd the Priest standing on the rubble-pile of a fallen building, arms upstretched above the tossing torches, shrieking the tribesmen on. And in the same instant the man beside him, taking a chance in the torchlight, nocked an arrow to the bow he had taken from under his cloak. Close to his ear Alexios heard a throbbing twang, and the bow sprang from its tense curve. And the mad figure on the rubble mound stood rigid for an instant clawing at the arrow in its throat, then pitched over backwards with a bubbling scream.
A fresh howl rose from the tribesmen as they saw their priest go down. And as though in answer, rising clear above the uproar, from somewhere in the wild night beyond, came the clear ringing notes of a hunting-horn sounding the charge; and a fresh yelling as of all the black hosts of Ahriman, and a smother of hoof-beats sweeping near over the snowy ground.
15 Return to the Wall
THE PRESSURE OF the tribesmen seemed to waver and lose impetus as the yelling newcomers crashed into them from the rear; and with an answering yell the defenders of the waggon park rose and poured across the breastwork. Taken before and behind, in the storm and darkness they had no idea how many or how few were the wild horsemen crashing in upon them. Their Chieftain and their Priest were dead; and now that the screeching voice no longer cried ‘Kill! Kill!’ from somewhere deep within the Votadini the knowledge of broken faith rose to sap their fighting powers.
They crumbled and turned and fled, the Painted People with them, for the place where they had left their ponies. Many of them never reached it, with the Frontier Wolves howling on their heels. Those who did, flung themselves in something near panic upon the waiting beasts, and streamed away like a broken dream into the night.
‘Seems it was worth playing for time, after all,’ Hilarion shouted.
Later, the optio of the relief force, such as it was – a double patrol of the Frontier Wolves, twenty men in all – stood before Alexios, as he sat by one of the cooking-fires nursing his tightly bandaged arm across his knees, and made his report. He made it woodenly, his eyes fixed on the air above the other’s head. He had been used to report each time he returned, and at times such as this training was something to hold on to; so he made his report to Alexios because none of his officers were left alive to receive it.
‘The Attacotti are landing all along the West Coast, and some of the Damnoni and the other Western tribes have joined them. They say some of the Arcani, too, but we’ve no proof of that; the Attacotti we saw. Segontium has fallen, but the rest of the Wall forts are still in our hands, though the trouble is still spreading. We were on our way back – forced riding – when we got word of Bremenium . . .’ His face twitched and crumpled, then turned wooden again.
‘Sit down, Optio,’ Alexios said.
The man shook his head. ‘Rather stand, Sir.’
‘Sit down!’
The optio folded up beside the fire. ‘Sorry, Sir. We sent a couple of scouts forward at sunset, while we lay up, and they brought back word of what was happening out there in the settlement; and we made all the speed we could. Didn’t know who it was holed up here in the waggon park. The scouts reported Frontier Wolves but could tell no more. We thought it might be some of our own lads.’
‘About a dozen of us are – what remains of the Praepositus’s escort. The rest
of us – no, we’re not your lads; we’re the Third Ordo, down from Castellum,’ Alexios spoke gently. ‘I’m sorry.’
The optio managed the shadow of a grin. ‘No need to apologize, Sir.’ Then with a sick weariness, ‘How could it have happened? The strongest fort north of the Wall?’
‘The Arcani opened the gates.’
‘You – know that, Sir?’
Alexios nodded. ‘We found one man still alive. He lived just long enough to tell us.’
‘So it was true about the Arcani.’
‘Seems like it.’
‘Oh God, oh God, what a mess!’ said the optio.
‘Have you lost any men from the patrol?’
‘Two dead, five wounded,’ he jerked his head towards the battered range of ware-sheds where all the wounded lay in the shelter of the half-fallen roof. ‘It was hot work, just at first.’
Hilarion loomed into the firelight, unwinding bright rags from his waist. ‘Sir, may I return to you the dragon of the Third Ordo, Frontier Wolves.’
Presently the meat was scorched rather than cooked, and when chunks of it had been taken out to the sentries at their posts and issued to those of the wounded who could eat it or drink the broth, the rest crowded about the fires, gnawing at it like famished dogs.
The optio of the returned patrol looked at the meat and then at Alexios.
‘The Painted People drove off most of the ponies,’ Alexios said, ‘but they left one poor brute behind them hamstrung but still alive – it’s all right, Optio, we have made the offering to the Mother of Foals. Bid your lads to the Midwinter Feast.’
They kept a strong guard that night, changing it at two-hourly intervals instead of the usual four, for the sake of the cold and weary men. But in truth, Alexios thought, there was not likely to be any further attack before morning, from the Votadini anyway. The Picts were of course another matter, a different danger. But there would not be enough of them in this band to make an attack on their own.
The night wore away in quiet, save for the howling of four-footed wolves who caught the battlefield smell of the fort from far off but dared not come too close for the watch-fires. Crouching beside one of those fires, between visits to his guard posts, Alexios heard them, and thought, ‘Have patience, four-foot brothers, tomorrow the fires will be out.’ He wished that they could bury the dead, all the dead, not just their own, not just Lucius; but his job was to get the living down to the Wall.
The usual two hours before dawn, they marched for Habitancum.
A good deal more snow had fallen in the night, covering the blood on yesterday’s snow, covering the dead with a gentle white coverlet until the thaw came, or the wolves. Alexios wondered whether the tribesmen had carried off their Chieftain’s body when they fled, or whether he still lay where he had fallen last night in the cleared space before the gate-gap, and took care not to look too closely at the pale hummocks that showed faintly in the snow-lit dark as they rode by. Better to remember the high moors beyond Credigone; better to remember the hunting fire and the shared laughter, and leave the rest to the wolves.
Some of the ponies had been killed in last night’s attack; but men had been killed too, and now there was no need to use animals for pack duty, for they had scarcely anything save their wounded left to carry; so there were enough mounts still for their full remaining force, and even a few spares.
The survivors of the Praepositus’s escort and the Bremenium patrol now formed part of the Fore Guard, and took over the duties of scouting ahead and path-finding through this country that they knew as a man knows his own kalegarth. Snow was still spitting down the wind as they rode out, but the sky was less full than yesterday; and presently as they rode, the low dawn showed a bar of cold daffodil-yellow through a break in the cloud-roof far down to the south-east.
Riding at the head of the Main Guard, Alexios was finding that it took quite a lot of concentration to sit up straight in the saddle, not hunched forward over the pain in his left arm. Anthonius had re-dressed it and made him a sling from a strip torn from a dead auxiliary’s cloak; but every snow-clogged beat of Phoenix’s hooves under him seemed to go through him with a sickening jar, and from shoulder to finger-tips his arm felt as though it was made of hot lead, except that lead does not throb. Heavy, so heavy, despite the sling. Again and again he straightened up as the sheer weight of it seemed to drag him down. Not a good idea to let the men see him riding hunched over as though he should be with the wounded in the rear. He straightened his shoulders yet again.
Presently, exploring under his cloak, he felt warm stickiness coming through the sling. Curse! He was bleeding again. Once, Hilarion ranged up beside him and asked under his breath, ‘Are you all right, Sir?’
‘I was never better,’ Alexios informed him through shut teeth. And Hilarion saluted, and fell back to his own place again.
By the straight military road, Habitancium was not much over half a day’s foot-march; but they were following ways known to the Bremenium men, which had nothing to do with roads; secret ways among the hills that almost doubled the distance. So it was sunset when they came in sight of the fort. But though twice they had crossed the tracks of sizeable companies, and once they had lain up in the birch below the crest of a ridge, each man with his pony’s muzzle strap twisted tight to prevent it whinnying, while a large mixed war-band of Picts and West Coast tribesmen passed along the valley below them, they had stayed clear of all encounters on the way. The Painted People, who had hunted them down from Castellum in company with Cunorix’s war-band, Alexios reckoned, had probably got tired of the hunt, which was not really theirs, and gone off in search of easier prey.
From a long way off, the fort showed dark and stubborn, but it was not until they were close enough to see the Roman standards floating above the gatehouse, and the heads of the sentries moving along the wall, that he really knew that yesterday’s nightmare was not going to be repeated. They had come to a living fort.
A while later, Alexios found himself in the lamplit office in the Principia, standing before the table stacked with papers, at which sat the fort Commander.
‘Third Ordo, Frontier Scouts, reporting in, Sir – also a double patrol of the First Ordo – what’s left of them.’
He wished the floor would stay still under his feet, instead of floating gently like the deck of a galley in a calm sea. You didn’t mind it in a galley, but on dry land it was disconcerting.
The Commandant added the paper he had been reading to one of the piles, and looked up, showing a narrow hard face with a humorous mouth that had at that moment no time for humour. ‘Ah yes, Ducenarius –’
‘Aquila, Sir, Alexios Flavius Aquila,’ said a familiar voice out of the shadows. ‘My successor at Castellum.’ And a figure that he had not noticed before stepped forward into the lamplight. He had almost forgotten that Julius Gavros would be here.
‘So. You have reached us just in time, Ducenarius Aquila. We pull out at dawn – this lot to the fire, I think . . .’
‘Pull out?’ Alexios said stupidly.
‘Yes. When the order for recall went up to you, our own orders were to remain here – close in to the Wall defences, as we are; but now, in view of the worsening situation, we are ordered back.’ The Commandant finally abandoned the papers, and leaned forward on his elbows, giving Alexios his whole attention. ‘I must say it is a pleasant surprise to see you. I very much doubted if the order would ever reach Castellum.’
‘It didn’t, Sir,’ Alexios said. ‘In view of the circumstances I pulled out on my own initiative.’
He was aware of a small quickly suppressed movement from Ducenarius Gavros, and turned his head a little to meet the other’s eyes. He felt suddenly very much older than he had done when last they stood face to face.
‘Circumstances?’ said the Commandant.
And Alexios heard his own voice making some sort of report, of the breaking of the Frontier peace and the happenings of the following days. Odd to think that only ten days o
r so ago, life had been normal, and apart from the feeling of thunder brewing at the back of his neck, there had been nothing to worry about beyond the problems of satisfying Praepositus Montanus on his visit of inspection.
In the silence when he had finished, he heard the steps of the sentry outside, drawing nearer along the colonnade, passing by, growing fainter. A very orderly sound, belonging to an orderly world that seemed strange to him just now.
The Commandant’s voice sounded out of the silence, its tone suddenly sharpened, ‘You’re wounded.’
‘A sword cut in the arm, last night, Sir.’
The Commandant turned to Julius Gavros. ‘He’s one of yours. Take him across to the sick block for patching up. He’s bleeding all over my floor.’
Later, much later still that evening, having had his arm re-dressed by the camp surgeon, having seen his own men safely bestowed and forced down an evening meal that he was by then past wanting, Alexios was sitting on the edge of the narrow cot in Gavros’s sleeping quarters, trying one-and-a-half handed to do something about the flattened head of the Ordo dragon, which he had just unbound from his waist.
Gavros, just back from rounds, was standing in the doorway that gave onto the outer chamber, throwing off his wolfskin cloak and slipping his sword-belt over his head.
‘How is the arm?’
‘It is for aching when the wind blows from the east.’ Alexios frowned at his task, and quoted a veteran of the Third Ordo, whose old weather-wise spear-wound was well known to both of them.
Gavros turned to lay his sword on the chest. ‘Ask a fool question . . . Your lads are crowing it through the fort how you came by that wound. Strange, in the old Chief’s Hall that day, I could have sworn there was to be friendship between you and Cunorix.’
‘There was.’
Gavros stood for a moment as though making up his mind about something; then he came across the room and stood, his arms along the high window-ledge and looking out into the night. ‘Do you think you could tell me the things that you left out of your report to the Commandant?’