The War at the Edge of the World (37 page)

‘Form the men up,’ he said. ‘Quietly – no horns. Marching order, but get them ready to fight if they need to.’

Modestus nodded quickly, frowning, and then hissed out the instructions. Clatter of kit, shields and spears, muffled curses. Too loud. Castus stayed kneeling, staring at the village. How stupid he would look if he was wrong – if the scouts were still picking their way around the boundary of an empty settlement, or maybe already at the far perimeter, sitting around eating apples… His head felt thick and hazy with dread and anticipation.

He got to his feet, stepped to the front of the column and gave the order to march. Behind him the regular crunch of boots on pathway dirt, the heat of men in armour, marching four abreast. He fought the temptation to double his pace, order them into a run. The sensation on his neck was like a fire burning at his back.

The path widened, and the village opened before him. The usual straggle of a dozen or so huts, ringed around by fences, animal pens between them and a broad dusty clearing in the middle with an old tree at the far end. All the hut doors closed. No sign of the scouting parties. Castus passed between the first couple of huts, flicking his eyes to left and right. He sensed the men behind him slowing and gathering closer as they marched, falling into step with a heavier tread.

Now they were into the central clearing. Wattle fences and low huts on all sides, the tree at the end, everything quiet. No point in secrecy now, Castus thought; he should recall the scouts. They must have got lost in the bushes somewhere…

‘Cornicen,’ he said, turning to the hornblower at his right shoulder, ‘sound the…’

A brief flicker of movement from the animal pens caught his eye. A spearhead, glinting in the sun. Castus tensed, staring, and then heard the sudden shouts from behind him.

There was movement all around now, men leaping from the animal pens and appearing between the huts. A figure reared up at the far edge of the clearing, a scarred and painted warrior, spike-haired, raising a spear above his head and crying out.

‘Shields!’ Castus yelled, sweeping his sword from the scabbard. He could hear the panic behind him, the clattering con­fusion. Already the first javelins were arcing from the pens. Most fell short, but he heard one of them strike, then a high screech of pain.

Shield raised, sword in hand, Castus backed up until he met the man behind him. A barbed javelin head snicked off his shield rim and spun away. He glanced back over his shoulder quickly. Half the men were formed up behind their shields, but the rest clustered in packs or crouched on the ground, paralysed by shock as the javelins lanced and stabbed between them.

‘Modestus! Form the men!’ Castus yelled, and the words ripped at his throat. ‘Double files – face out!’ He pushed his way back, half turning, grabbing and shoving at shoulders and arms, at shields and helmets, trying to bully the men into formation. ‘Optio to me!’ he shouted. Something cracked off his helmet. A slingstone. They were aiming at him now.

For the first few moments of the attack the Picts had stayed behind cover, hurling their missiles from the pens and huts; now they saw the Romans bunching together they came out into the open, clambering across the walls and spilling from the doorways to shout and curse and brandish their spears and square-tipped swords. Castus reached the centre of the line and found Modestus pushing towards him. He grabbed the optio and pulled him close.

‘We need to get amongst them,’ he shouted. His words were punctuated by the rattle of stones and javelins on shields. ‘Take the right wing. I’ll take the left. At my command we charge in wedge formation. When we reach them, split into fours. Understand?’

Modestus nodded, white-faced.

The enemy warriors were moving closer, preparing to rush. Behind them, others continued the javelin barrage. Castus glanced around him: the century was formed into a tight knot now, a rough oval two deep behind locked shields. They had practised this formation scores of times on the drill field over the winter, but now it was real.

Raising his shield high, Castus pushed between the men to his left until the reached the front rank – they were packed too tight to throw javelins or darts. It would be a charge, or die slowly here. The Picts were only twenty paces away, daring themselves to attack. Castus felt his guts tighten, the lock of fear, the blood thick and heavy in his neck. A familiar dread – but he remembered the stone enclosure on the hillock, the tribesmen rushing at the walls… A sudden wave of anger ran through him, prickling across his scalp beneath the helmet’s weight.

‘At my command,’ Castus shouted, ‘form wedge and prepare to charge!’

He could hear the man beside him gagging. There was a sharp smell of urine. A flung javelin punched through his shield and hung there, swaying.

‘Form… wedge!’

A quick glance behind: Modestus shoving his men into position. Most still had their spears, and the rest drew swords.

Unconquered Sun be with me now. Your light between us and evil
.

‘Charge!’

Castus launched himself forward as he shouted, shield up, sword low and level.
If they don’t follow me I’m a dead man
… A roaring behind him, around him – his own men, following his lead. The noise powered him on, five running strides, then ten, the enemy massing to meet the charge. Castus ran at the warrior ahead of him, swerved at the last moment and slammed into the man to his left. The soldier behind him cut the first warrior down; the second fell to Castus’s reaching blade.

‘You’re into them now, Victrix!’ he heard himself shouting, his muscles of his neck bulging. ‘Stick every mother’s son! Hunt the bastards down!’

Running, striking to left and right, he was almost at the huts now. He slashed low, severed a man’s tendons, and smashed him down with the shield boss. A sword swept the air beside his head. Turning on his heel, he cut high and felt his blade bite. Little sound now, only breath against his teeth, hollow battering of blades on shield boards, and the strange high clink and grate of metal.

A face appeared before him, familiar somehow – surprised, Castus recognised the dog-faced man that had wrestled him at the hill fort. He jinked left, and as the man hesitated he threw himself forward behind the shield. The collision punched the breath from his lungs, but he slammed Dog-face against the wall of a hut. Praying that someone was behind him watching his back, Castus angled his sword around the shield rim and drove the blade up under the man’s ribs. A gush of blood across his sword-hand, and he let the man drop.

‘Not so clever this time, eh?’ he said.

Movement from his right as he turned, a grimacing warrior darting in from his unguarded side, driving a spear with both hands. Castus blocked, but too slow – the spearhead punched against the mail on his hip, the blow almost toppling him; then it grated downward and gashed his thigh. One cut hacked the spear aside; a backhand slash split the attacker’s face.

For a moment he felt nothing. There was nobody around him now – just his own trail of destruction stretching behind him. Then he felt the lash of pain from his wound and stifled a cry, almost dropping to his knees. Hot blood poured down his leg, and he clamped his sword hand against the wound and sucked air into his lungs. Limping, glazed in the aftermath of the fight, Castus moved around the wall of the hut. Mailed figures ran between the animal pens, cutting down fugitives.

‘Prisoners!’ he called out through clenched teeth. ‘We need prisoners!’

One of his soldiers was beside him, pointing. Castus limped after the man, trying to keep his head up. Between the stone walls they reached a wattle-walled pen at the rear of the village. Soldiers stood around, silent and gazing, and in the rutted mud and dung Castus saw the bodies of the scouting party.

Julius Stipo still had a startled look on his face, but his throat was slashed open to his spine. Macrinus lay beside him, his head severed and placed upon his chest. The third man had his mail dragged up around his shoulders and his stomach opened. All three had dark bloodstains between their legs.

Castus exhaled slowly. Behind him he could hear men dying, soldiers shouting.

‘Cover them,’ he said quietly to the man beside him, and then limped back between the huts.

In the central compound the prisoners had been herded together. Low-ranking fighters mostly, but a few painted war­riors among them. As Castus watched he saw Placidus, the big Gaul, drag a prisoner to his knees and hack off his head with a single blow.

‘Halt!’ he shouted. ‘Spare the rest. We need to take them back to camp.’

Placidus stared at him, his face boiling, the reddened sword in his hand. ‘You saw what they did,’ he said, raising the blade to point between the huts. ‘They die! All of them!’

Castus glanced at the other soldiers, and saw the look in their eyes. Fierce, half sick, half excited. The killing frenzy still gripped them. Most were new recruits – men who had seen their homes and families destroyed by the Picts last summer. The pain in his leg had shifted to a heavy throb, and his right boot was wet with blood, but Castus urged himself forward. He was still holding his drawn weapon.

‘Sword down, Placidus,’ he said. ‘Remember your military oath. You’re under orders.’

‘
Orders
,’ the Gaul sneered. ‘And why should we obey you? You left your last century to be massacred, to save your own skin!’ He grabbed another of the prisoners by the hair, pulling him close. ‘I’m not taking any chances…’

Castus held his own blade low at his side. His blood ran cold with fury. Fear as well – but he would show neither. Some of the other men were backing away now, the fire dying from their eyes. All of them knew the punishment for mutiny.

Now only three paces separated Castus from the Gaul. Their gazes locked, and Castus tried to ignore the pain of his wound, tried not to blink. He heard Modestus’s voice, quiet and firm.

‘Step back, soldier. Your centurion’s spoken.’

Placidus let his gaze drop. Then he turned away. Castus heard the sound of released breath.

‘Get the prisoners secured,’ he said. ‘Where’s Flaccus?’

‘Here, centurion.’ The standard-bearer appeared at his side, stone-faced and impassive.

‘Report?’

‘Three dead, centurion – that’s the scouting party. Two badly wounded but walking. Ten or so minor wounds. Plus you…’

‘This is nothing,’ Castus told him, glancing down at his bloodsoaked leg. It could have been a lot worse. They had eight prisoners secured as well. Probably around a score of enemy dead. He wiped his face, and through a squint saw Remigius and the second scouting party coming in from the village boundary.

‘Sorry, centurion,’ Remigius said. ‘They were all around us – we had to lie low, or they’d have killed us.’

Castus nodded, waving the man away. He noticed Diogenes trailing after his group leader with a look of shame on his face so intense Castus wanted to laugh.

Fear does many things to a man, he thought, but it seldom makes him brave.

They left the village burning behind them and marched back to the camp with the prisoners carrying the wrapped bodies of the slain legionaries. By the time they arrived back inside the ramparts Castus could no longer feel his right leg. He went to the medical station, but stayed only long enough for the wound to be cleaned, sutured and properly dressed. The cut was bloody but not deep, but his right hip was aching and livid with bruises where the spearpoint had punched into the mesh of mail and the padded vest beneath.

Back in the tent lines the men were singing. The patrol had brought back two sheep with them, and the men were feasting on roast mutton hot and greasy from the fire, telling exaggerated stories of the fight to their unlucky comrades who had remained behind at camp. Six months ago most of them had been farmers, labourers and townsmen; now they were soldiers, blooded in combat. Few grieved for the dead men; they had expected much worse, and felt the glory of survival.

Castus felt it too, although the delayed shock of what had happened was stronger. Perhaps they all had this same sensation, and covered it with the laughter and feasting of their brothers around the fires? For a terrible moment back in the village, as the column had broken apart and chaos had taken hold, he had feared total bloody ruin. When he thought about it now, he felt the sick clench of fear in his belly, the weakness in his limbs. But they had done well, they had held together. There would be no more mistakes now.

Placidus was more of a problem. His actions back at the village had been close to open mutiny; Castus could have had him flogged, could even have killed him right there and then. He had said as much to the big Gaul as soon as they were back in camp. Before the assembled men he had demoted Placidus to a common soldier and appointed another man, Attalus, as section leader in his place. Placidus could go and join Remigius’s section – he would not be well liked there. But if his power and influence was dented, his threat remained. He was resentful now, vengeful. Castus knew he would have to watch his back from now on. The words the Gaul had spoken to him in the village still ached in his mind. Was that truly what they thought of him?

That evening, as he limped along the wall parapet cursing his bruised hip and the stinging wound in his thigh, Castus heard the first terrible screams drifting across the camp from the central enclosure. The sentries at the ramparts stiffened, glan­cing back over their shoulders; the men still lingering around the embers of the cooking fires muttered and made signs against evil. Eight times those wrenching howls rang out across the camp – once for each of the prisoners the patrol had brought in. Castus had heard those sounds before, and knew what they meant: the mangling of bodies; the defiling of flesh. The
quaestionarii
of the legions were both inventive and thorough. It was dishonourable, but they usually got results. Perhaps, he thought, the men that Placidus had executed were the lucky ones after all.

The night before the battle he dreamed of the dead. They were all around him, pressing close in darkness, and he shrank from their touch. He saw Marcellinus retching over his bowl of poison, Strabo stretching his neck to the butcher’s knife. He saw Timotheus and Culchianus, their eyes filled with blood, Stipo the fullery assistant with his throat opened to his spine. He was cold, but pouring sweat as if he lay on the burning floor of a hypocaust.