Alexios looked up. ‘Where would be the point?’
‘The powers that be will ask for more details than the Commandant did, he having other things to occupy his mind, tonight.’
Alexios felt as though all the blood jumped in his tired body. ‘Not another Inquiry?’
‘Ach, no. But they will ask for more details. And I think that you may find it easier to give them if you have first gone through them with me.’
‘Get them straight in my mind, you mean?’
‘Partly; but more than that; I think that there have been things in the past few days that you will find it harder to speak of, the longer they remain unspoken, until maybe you cannot speak of them at all.’
And somehow, in a dead-level voice, Alexios found himself telling what Julius Gavros asked. He was so tired and his arm hurt so much that he could not remember what he had told the Commandant after all, and so he told it all again; from the horse-stealing half in jest and his own killing of Connla. ‘The light was going – he’d have been torn to rags. It seemed the only thing to do.’
‘It probably was the only thing to do,’ said Julius Gavros. ‘Go on.’
And Alexios went on. ‘So the Praepositus relieved me of my command and put me under arrest – and then the first attack came, and he was killed. So I took over the command again. Hilarion will bear me out in all this. And then – well I told the Commandant about the further attacks and my decision to pull out.’ How drab and pointless it all sounded.
‘That can’t have been easy.’
‘It wasn’t. The Lord of the Legions knows it wasn’t,’ Alexios said.
They looked at each other in the light of the lamp in its wall niche; and all that Alexios had not told even now, seemed passing to and fro unspoken between them. Even the untold part about Cunorix. And for the first time since he had made the decision, though he had thought he was sure at the time, Alexios knew that it had been the right one. That even if the order to withdraw which never reached him had not been sent, it would still have been the right one.
He let out a little sigh, like someone letting go a physical strain, and turned the dragon head on his knee to come at another place with his knife point.
Gavros dropped his gaze to the bright bloodstained silken rags trailing across Alexios’s knee, and the grotesquely flattened mask of bronze and silver wires he was holding in a hand half out of its sling. ‘What would you be trying to do with that bit of wreckage?’
‘Get it back into parade-ground shape.’ Alexios tried not very successfully to work his dagger point between the crushed jaws to ease them open. ‘Number Three Ordo, Frontier Wolves isn’t going to ride into Onnum tomorrow except under its own standard.’ There was a warm pride in his voice. ‘But I don’t seem to have enough hands.’
From the darkness outside came the clear well-ordered notes of the trumpet sounding for the Second Watch of the night. Marching feet went past; somewhere a voice shouted orders. The fort was still busy with preparations for marching in the morning. ‘We’ll be back,’ Alexios said, without conviction.
Gavros did not answer.
An hour before daybreak the garrison of Habitancum, making what was officially a ‘Temporary withdrawal’, marched out through the Praetorian gate. A very different march-out from the one Alexios had led five days ago from Castellum. A solid half cohort of Auxiliaries – Raetian spearmen – and four flanking squadrons of Cavalry forming the Main Guard, the Second Ordo, Frontier Scouts forming the Van; and behind the baggage train, forming the Rear Guard, the Castellum men and the few survivors of the First Ordo. Yesterday they had ridden like a grim skein of ghosts, but now after a square meal and a warm night, and with the knowledge that they were on the last day’s march and every mile would see them closer in to the forward defences of the Wall, they rode like living men again, like the Frontier Wolves, the proud scrapings of the Empire who would not call the Praetorian Guard their equals. Alexios felt the renewed spirit in them as he rode at their head, Phoenix’s rein twisted round his almost useless left hand – luckily he and his mount knew each other’s ways so well that he really only needed his knees – and in his right hand a spear from the tip of which floated the bright bloodstained rags of the Ordo dragon, its mask now roughly opened out and wearing a somewhat drunken leer.
It was a bitter dawn, and the breaths of men and ponies smoked about them as they rode, but it seemed that at last the sky had emptied itself of snow. The sunrise came silvergilt behind the tattered cloud-bars that were drifting away, and presently the shadows of horses and men and upheld standards and the birch trees of the hillside lay long and sharp edged, blue as hyacinths across the fallen white.
Rome was withdrawing yet again from the Frontier hills; but they were doing it in style, heads high and at their own pace, as a promise to all who saw them, that presently they would come again, as they had always done before. ‘But will we?’ Alexios thought. ‘Will we – this time?’
He gave his shoulders the old familiar jerk, and sat up straight against the drag of his wounded arm, determined that at least he would do credit to the men following him, as they were doing credit to him.
Somewhere in a bare thicket of rowan and hazel a robin sang as though there was no sorrow in the world, and from the skein of men behind him someone whistled back.
All day they held straight down the great military road, with the watery sunlight glinting on the Cohort standard and the red horsehair crests of the auxiliary officers. Once there was a short sharp skirmish between the right-hand cavalry wing and a small war party who they put up much like a dog putting up game. But the column swung steadily on. Time and again a few Pictish war arrows loosed at extreme range thrummed into their midst from behind some scrap of cover, and a couple of men were wounded, and in the last ranks of the rear-guard men nocked an arrow to their short Syrian bows, and turned in the saddle to return fire, though there was nothing visible to loose at. But it was clear that as yet there was no big war-host so far to the south-east, and so close in to the Wall. By tomorrow probably it would be another matter.
And when, some while past noon, they saw horsemen pricking up from the south, the shout that went up from the Fore Guard and spread back down the line was a cheer of greeting. And beside Alexios, Optio Garwin, narrowing his eyes into the snow glare as he pulled his pony clear of the column for a better look, came back grinning. ‘A full wing of the Asturians from Cilurnum! They’re bringing us in style!’
‘It’s no more than we deserve,’ Alexios said, trying not to let the words sound blurred. He was feeling very cold, with a sick coldness that seemed to clutch at his heart and belly. Only his left arm was not cold, but throbbed like a forge fire. And the stickiness had come back, making his hand slippery on the reins.
There was a time of sun-dazzle on snow, and then a faint mist rising that might have been made of frost and evening fog and distant woodsmoke, or might have been in his own head. And then far ahead of them was the dark shape of the Wall snaking along the high ground, with a smoky sunset away to the right behind it, and the towers of Onnum with a shadow bloom on them like the bloom on black grapes, drawing nearer and nearer.
And then there were more horsemen; and torches, and the gates of Onnum standing wide. And already the head of the column was passing through. But the new horsemen had reined to one side to watch them pass; and as each Century and troop went by, standards were lifted high in salute, and heads turned and there was a flash of uptossed weapons in the mingled light of sunset and torches.
Nearer and nearer yet. Hazily Alexios realized that the new cavalry were an escort of some sort. As the sunset faded and the torches began to bite, he could make out shields – incredible shields of Imperial Purple, blazoned in gold – and in their midst a man on a tall black horse, his helmet-crest of eagle feathers and his cloak of the same Imperial Purple. A man whose face he was sure he had seen somewhere on a coin.
He raised the tattered dragon in salute, and heard his men shout a
nd the rasp and hiss of blades being drawn and tossed up behind him; and the face on the coin hovered forward with a look of quickened interest. And then the torchlit dark of the gate arch received them.
In the broad and crowded parade-ground within, that was already full of Habitancium men, he drew rein, his men behind him, and dropped from the saddle.
The ground rose up to meet him, and he heard someone say, ‘Hold up, Sir.’ And felt an arm round him before torchlight and dusk spun together, and he sank quietly into nothingness as into a pit.
16 The First Attacotti Frontier Scouts
THE NEXT TIME Alexios knew anything at all clearly again, it was another evening – evening or early morning, just at first he was not sure which, for the square patch of sunlight that danced and trembled like golden water on the lime-washed wall at the foot of the cot could have belonged to either. But then he heard the trumpet sounding for Stables, and knew that it must be evening because at that time of year morning Stables came before sun-up.
He seemed to have just floated out of some kind of cloud, and everything on the far side of the cloud seemed a long time ago. Perhaps it was a long time ago. He had no means of knowing. He felt cool and rather damp, which was pleasant, because the cloud had been hot and scorching-dry. There had been daylight and lamplight in it; and faces and hands that came and went, but all blurred and hazy. He remembered a small yellow-faced man with the winged staff and twisted serpents of a medic on his tunic most often. Remembered him saying something about leeches for the wound-fever, and a voice that had sounded surprisingly like Uncle Marius’s, saying, ‘Good God! Man, he’s bled almost white already!’ Come to think of it, he seemed to remember his uncle’s face, too, somewhere in the cloud. But maybe that was just a dream. Maybe it was all a dream . . .
He was lying under a striped native rug in much such a small lime-washed sleeping cell as he had known, in one place or another, ever since he joined the Eagles; or at least since he had finished with the barrack rows of his time below the vine staff. In this particular cell the small high window was at the head of the cot. He made to roll over and look out of it, and a vicious jab of pain told him that the ache he had been vaguely aware of somewhere close by was actually centred in his own left arm, which was tightly bandaged and lying on the cot beside him like something that did not really belong to him at all.
He began to remember things before the coming of the cloud, chief among them the cleared space before the wrecked waggon park at Bremenium, and the dizzy whirling of snow in the torchlight, and Cunorix’s face across the rim of his shield.
He put up his good hand quickly, as though to thrust that particular memory away, and saw with a detached interest how thin it was, the wrist bones showing like those of a gaunt old man and the tendons to the fingers standing out like cords. He opened and shut it experimentally, for the satisfaction of feeling that at least he had one hand that was still his own; and a shadow hand opened and shut on the sun-square on the wall. The old battered ring with its flamed emerald hung loose on his finger. Have to be careful or he’d lose it. It was on the wrong hand, anyway. Somebody must have shifted it over for him.
As he looked, the sunlight caught the stone, and far down in the heart of it woke a tiny spit of green fire. He played with it idly, turning his hand to watch the green spark wake and sleep and wake again. And suddenly just as he had done riding up the Castellum road nearly a year and a half ago, he thought of the men from whom that ring had come down to him: but it was a different kind of thinking. ‘You can’t say I’ve failed you,’ he told them, ‘not now. Whatever happens to me now, however much my nice shining military career stays ruined, I got the Ordo back – well, we got each other back.’ But almost in the same moment he knew that not having failed his forebears was good but not really the thing that mattered. He had not failed something else, though he was not sure what; he had kept some nameless faith within himself; and that was the thing that really mattered. In his utter weakness he found to his horror that he wanted to cry, and rubbed the back of his hand angrily across his eyes.
The curtain over the doorway was pulled back and an orderly came in. But it must be later; quite a bit later, for the sun-square had gone and there was a lamp burning in a niche in the wall. The man carried a slab of bread and a bowl of something that smelled like broth; and the smell made Alexios suddenly aware that he was hungry. The orderly looked harassed and in a hurry. ‘You awake, Sir? That’s the way then. If I give you the bowl can you manage – fresh batch of wounded just come in, and we’re a bit pushed, tonight.’
‘I can manage,’ Alexios said. But he was clumsy with weakness and lying too flat, and some of the broth slopped over onto the blanket. He cursed, quietly but vehemently, and in the same instant the door-curtain that was still swinging behind the departing orderly swung back again, and the tall crane-fly figure of Hilarion strolled in.
‘You’ll live,’ said Hilarion. ‘Nobody could curse like that who wasn’t on the mend.’ And then taking in the spilled broth, ‘Here, give me that.’
He took the bowl, and sitting himself down on the edge of the cot, slipped an arm under Alexios’s head to raise him and held it to his mouth, all with the most unexpected gentleness.
Alexios took a mouthful of the warm broth and swallowed, almost before he knew it. ‘How long have I been here?’
‘More than a week.’
Alexios was not surprised. It could have been anything from an hour to a hundred years. But a lot of water could pass under a lot of bridges in a week. ‘What’s – been happening?’
‘Drink some more broth,’ Hilarion said, ‘and I’ll tell you.’
Alexios gave a small cracked laugh. ‘You sound like my old nurse.’
‘A worthy woman, I have no doubt – have some bread? I wouldn’t, if I were you, it seems to be the consistency of old saddle leather.’
‘I’ll stick to the broth, then – only in the Name of Light tell me what’s been happening.’
So, in the intervals of tipping warm broth into him, Hilarion told. ‘Well, we seem to have left the whole Frontier country going up in flames behind us – Habitancum burned out, the Damnoni swarming in from the West Coast along with the Attacotti, to join spears with the Picts – though I doubt they’ve any clear idea what they’re fighting about.’
‘At least Cunorix’s lot knew that,’ Alexios said, and there was a small silence.
Then Hilarion went on. ‘Anyhow, the Emperor has sent in the Legions now. The good old flat-footed Sixth from Eburacum and the Twentieth up from Deva. Gavros and the Second Ordo have been ordered off westward for scouting duties with them, so things should be quieting down soon.’
‘Emperor?’ A confused memory was trying to shake itself clear of the fever-cloud in Alexios’s mind: a flash of gold and purple – a face that he seemed to have seen on a coin – troops shouting the old out-of-date salutation that the army still hung on to, ‘Hail Caesar!’
He frowned at Hilarion, trying to get the memory into focus. ‘That was the Emperor? Constans? What was he doing here?’
‘Come out to see the fun, I suppose.’
‘No, I mean – what is he doing in Britain? Didn’t know he – was in Britain, did we?’
‘No, we didn’t. Communications haven’t been all that good just lately, you’ll remember; and he’d only just arrived – come over from Gaul to look for himself into rumours of incompetence and disloyalty among the officials left over from his brother’s reign – we could tell him about that – and arrived just in time to see the North go up in flames.’
Alexios abandoned the Emperor, and went back to something that mattered to him more nearly, ‘What about our own lot?’
‘The Third Ordo is taking life comparatively easy at the moment. We have been temporarily added to the Onnum garrison.’
‘Why us? We’re not much good at that kind of duty.’
‘The Onnum garrison are below strength, and – well I suppose the Dux your esteemed uncle thou
ght we could do with a short spell in barracks to get our breath back and lick our wounds.’
Again there was a small sharp silence, and then Alexios asked, ‘How many have we lost?’
‘Twenty-seven killed since we pulled out of Castellum,’ Hilarion said, still with that surprising gentleness. ‘Something over thirty wounded badly enough to be out of action.’
‘So we’re still – what – something over half fighting strength,’ Alexios said; and then, ‘Poor old Third.’
‘A good number of the wounded will be back on the fighting strength presently.’
‘But not the killed.’
‘No,’ said Hilarion, ‘not the killed.’ He set aside the empty bowl and lounged to his feet. ‘The survivors, however, are bright of eye and bushy of tail, and telling the world in general that any time you feel like setting up as Emperor on your own account, they are behind you in close formation. I do think it might be a good thing if you go to sleep now and make a rapid recovery, so that you can take over the command again before they make Onnum too hot to hold them.’
‘The devils!’ said Alexios with affection.
‘The devils!’ agreed Hilarion. ‘Good night.’
Time passed, and Alexios began to gather strength again, while the daily dressing of his arm became a less messy and less painful business; and news from outside the sick block and then from outside the fort began to drift in to him.
Everything was quieting down, as the old Sixth and Twentieth with the cavalry of the Wall forts took over, dealing with the Picts and the Attacotti, and breaking up the huge war-mobs of tribesmen without needless damage to either side.
‘You know,’ said Hilarion, one night when he had lounged in as he generally did after the evening meal, to sit on the edge of Alexios’s cot, ‘we’re used, these days, to thinking of the old Line-of-Battle Legions as second-rate. Oh not hard bargains like us, just – outdated. But I doubt if any of our modern pared-down fast-moving light field forces could have done a better job.’