saddle he had the presence of mind to wrap the reins around his left hand.
When he opened his eyes his mind was clear but his body felt as if it had been used for sword practice by a legionary cohort; every muscle ached and his right arm was a savage throbbing trial. Delaying the moment when he must move, he stared up at a sky of perfect eggshell blue through branches thick with leaves that rustled and creaked in the light breeze. Something was missing, though, and he had a stab of panic before he felt the pull of the reins on his left wrist. Surprisingly, his head rested on an object that was soft and pliant that he couldn’t remember placing there. A thick scent hung in the air around him but it had become so familiar that his brain took time to react to it.
He rolled over, careful to protect his injured arm, and stared at the thing beside him. A human leg. The body the leg belonged to lay two or three feet away, the flesh white as the marble that clad the Temple of Claudius, except for the obscene red gashes where the limbs and head had been hacked away. Unwillingly, he allowed his eyes to scan the scene around him. His first impression was of a shoal of dead fish on a beach; ivory pale, scattered, random and utterly lifeless. The corpses lay on the grass and among the trees and bushes, some with heads and some without, others with stomachs torn open or genitals removed. Each corpse had been stripped of everything of any value, but what little clothing remained told him they were Roman soldiers, either auxiliaries or legionaries. He struggled to his feet and vomited a thin spew of yellow bile, momentarily overwhelmed by the enormity of what surrounded him. But duty and a soldier’s instinct for survival told him he must try to make sense of it.
At first the distribution of the bodies — hundreds, perhaps even thousands of them — confused him. However, as he walked further, he began to discern a pattern. They had been marching south, which made them part of the Ninth, and the lack of a baggage train said they were travelling light and in a hurry. He tried to imagine the order of march: mounted scouts ranging in front, flank guards to the side, legionaries trudging in the van of the column, auxiliaries eating their dust behind, and the cavalry — there must have been cavalry accompanying a force this size — ready to react to any attack. Yet all their precautions had counted for nothing when their commander had brought them through this broad, wooded valley.
He reached a point where the dead appeared more numerous and lay in untidy ranks. Yes. It had begun here: the destruction of a legion. He studied his surroundings carefully before moving warily into the nearby trees. Crushed bushes and dead grass showed where the ambushers had sat, and the many blackened piles of excreta told of a long, patient wait. A large force, and more, if he was correct, on the opposite side of the valley. The attackers had struck here first, along a quarter-mile front, and forced the legion to adopt its favoured defensive line. There would have been no panic. If they had feared the numbers facing them they would have formed a square and fought their way to a more suitable position, but there was no sign they had done so. With their flanks and rear properly protected it should have been a simple matter of shield against shield and gladius against sword and spear; a battle the legionaries must win. But somehow a force of similar size had attacked from the rear, making the second line turn and face them. How? Had the cavalry been drawn off by some ruse? Certainly few of them had died here; he had seen, at most, four dead horses, probably the mounts of the cohort or auxiliary commanders. And finally, the fatal blow, a crushing attack on the left flank which had started a rout. Or not quite a rout. He followed the line of withdrawal and it was possible to see where small knots of legionaries had fought to the death to defend their comrades, but they became fewer and fewer as they were driven inexorably back. The bodies led him into an isolated clump of trees with a giant oak at the centre. The oak formed the bastion for their final stand. He could see it now, the launch of the last pila, the signiferi protecting their unit standards, hacking and chopping at the multitude surrounding them, until only one remained, who had fought to his last breath. He knew all this because, unlike every other corpse, this small cluster of bodies had been left untouched; they even retained their armour. One, a leather-skinned giant still in his wolfskin cloak, lay a little apart beneath his shield, which showed the distinctive charging bull of the Ninth on its metal boss. At first Valerius believed the attackers had been disturbed before they could desecrate the corpses, but there was something almost reverential about the manner in which the last man had been laid out. The Britons esteemed courage and valour above all else. Was this their chief or their king’s way of honouring a fellow champion?
He sat by the dead men for a few minutes, attempting to understand the scale of the disaster which had overtaken them. The whole of the south must have risen against Rome. An entire legion had been smashed here. Had they died fighting for their eagle? It would account for the ferocity of the defence. But a full legion at the hands of barbarians? It didn’t seem possible, yet he had seen the results with his own eyes and he remembered the warriors who had fought their way across the piled bodies to reach the Colonia militia. There could be three or four thousand dead lying in and around the valley. The loss of an eagle would taint every legionary who had ever marched with the Ninth. Worse, the disgrace of a defeat on this scale would be felt in Rome. Paulinus, too, would be touched by it, even if he was a hundred miles away when it happened.
He searched the dead men for personal identification or some weapon to give him at least a chance of fighting back against any wandering band of rebels he encountered, but he found nothing. When he was certain, he swung himself painfully into the saddle and retraced the legion’s tracks towards the north.
Where the forces of retribution gathered.
XL
The cavalry patrol found him just as the sun reached its highest point and they would have killed him if he hadn’t had the presence of mind to cry out the name of his unit as they approached at the gallop, their long spatha swords gleaming and their eyes bright and nervous. The decurion in command circled him warily before, in a thick Germanic accent, ordering him to dismount.
Valerius shook his head wearily. ‘I have urgent news for whoever is the senior commander in this area. Take me to see him at once.’
‘On whose authority?’ the German demanded.
Valerius shook off his cloak and heard the exclamations of dismay at the sight of his wounds. ‘I need no authority but my own. I am tribune Gaius Valerius Verrens, last commander of Colonia, only survivor of the Temple of Claudius, and you will take me or I will go alone. Who commands?’
The cavalryman hesitated. ‘Suetonius Paulinus, with the Fourteenth and the Twentieth.’
‘Then take me to the governor, but first give me a drink,’ Valerius said. ‘I have had nothing but some druid’s piss since dawn.’
By the time they reached the main column the legions had settled into their marching camp for the night and it took a few minutes before they tracked down Paulinus’s pavilion at the heart of the Fourteenth’s entrenchments. Valerius noticed a number of men with freshly bandaged wounds. So, they hadn’t had it all their own way on Mona; Lunaris had been right about that, at least. The camp of the Twentieth was considerably smaller than that of the Fourteenth, which told him Paulinus had left part of the legion in the west to consolidate whatever gains he’d achieved. Would he have made that decision if he’d been aware of the scale of the rebellion?
The German cavalryman handed him over to a senior tribune on Paulinus’s staff, an officer Valerius vaguely recognized. ‘Gnaeus Julius Agricola, at your service. The governor wishes to see you immediately, but…’
Valerius swayed on his feet and struggled to keep the resentment from his tone. ‘I’m sorry, I left my uniform at Colonia along with everything else.’
‘No, you mistake me. Please do not apologize,’ Agricola protested. ‘It’s just that I fear you might fall down and I would be in trouble if I lost you now. The governor has grave need of you.’
The tribune ushered him past the guards to Paulinus, who was staring as if hypnotized at a map of southern Britain pinned to a wooden frame. A second man in a legate’s sculpted bronze cuirass stood beside him. Eventually, the governor turned and even through his exhaustion Valerius registered the change in the man. The granite-chip eyes were sunk deep, the heavy brow was furrowed and his skin had taken on a sickly grey pallor emphasized by white stubble that made him look ten years older. Paulinus stared back at him, equally perplexed, his mind clearly attempting to put a name to the unkempt figure in the ragged Celtic clothing and bloody bandages. Valerius could hardly blame him; after all, he would remember a whole young man in the prime of youth, not a haggard spectre with only one hand.
It had been the price of his life.
