'I'll have a scar.'
'Which will soon be covered by a Celtic torque of valor!'
They went outside. The flower petals of the night before had been swept from the courtyard, and men and horses were gathering there for the expedition. The cavalry animals weren't fine-boned steeds but shorter, shaggier, more stolid beasts, obviously bred not just for speed but for endurance. They snorted and whinnied, nipping at each other. Each was loaded with equipment for a short expedition: water skin, food bag, holstered throwing lances, cooking utensils, and tarps. The prelude to attack was often a great rattle, as necessary baggage was set aside before a charge.
Soldier's heads swung to look curiously at the woman who was the reason for this expedition, their expressions not unfriendly. Valeria was novel, beautiful, aristocratic, and newlywed, and this foray was a welcome break from post routine.
Galba was waiting at their head. 'Good hunting, senior tribune,' Valeria greeted. 'I understand you ride to help one of our allies.'
'Rufus Braxus would swell like a toad to hear you call him that.'
'He's a chieftain?'
'He'll tell you he's a prince of the Novantae tribe, sire of nine sons, keeper of three wives, lord of a timbered hill fort, commander of eighty spears, and blood-bound to five high families. I'll tell you he's farmer, merchant, shepherd, drover, smuggler, cheat, and thief, who uses Roman money to carve a bigger stink-hole than he could by himself. As a result he's loud, ignorant, blasphemous, boastful, vain, sly, and lazy.'
'In other words, a Briton,' Clodius said.
'Aye, junior tribune, a Briton. A Celt. A barbarian. He helps us with word of the tribes farther north, and then tells them of Roman intentions. He's a border man, as close to an ally as we get in these parts. Now his neighbor, Caldo Twin-Axe, has stolen twenty head. Braxus promises information if we help get them back.'
'Is such theft common?' She was fascinated by this glimpse of border politics.
'Braxus no doubt stole the same cows himself the season before. It's their sport.'
Decurions reported the men ready; Galba bowed his good-bye and began shouting orders. The line of assembled troopers began to uncoil, making for the barrel arch of the north gate. A legionary standard, cavalry pennants, and dragon-head banners jutted into the air. As the column moved, the open heads of the dragons filled the fabric behind, inflating it, and so the cavalry rode out of the fortress with the bodies of serpents writhing above their helmets.
'They're so imposing,' Valeria said.
'Which is why they ride forth,' Clodius replied. 'To show our power. Come, let's watch from a tower.'
The buildings of Petrianis were packed ten feet apart. The junior tribune pointed out the granary, the saddler's shed, and the hospital as they passed. 'Good doctoring is the most powerful recruiting tool the army has.' Beyond was an armory, noisy with working soldiers. German recruits were hammering dents out of old armor. Syrians were shaping and fletching arrows from aspen, yew, and pine. Numidians were sorting river stones that would be fired from slings or catapults. The armory had a pungent smell of metal shavings, olive oil, and animal fat, used to combat rust.
'Because of the ambush, the post is sharpening preparations,' Clodius explained.
She was taken aback by the industry. 'I didn't mean to start a war. I fought them off with a brooch pin!' Since he grimaced at this unintentional comparison, she searched for another question. 'How did they know we'd be in the forest?'
'Our journey was no secret, and our progress slow. I made a bad choice.'
'It was at my insistence, Clodius.'
'We shared the mistake.'
'Perhaps we've all just had bad luck.'
He shook his head. 'I think things happen for a reason.'
Behind the armory were the stables of the cavalry, and they decided to pass through inside. The animals snorted and whinnied as the pair walked by the stalls, some begging for a treat, and Valeria's heart quickened. 'I'd like to pick one to go riding,' she said. 'Ride fast again, like in the forest. That white mare, perhaps, with the gray forehead.'
'A good eye. See how she's got the chest and legs for speed? Wide nostrils for stamina? And the mane falls to the right.' 'Is that important?'
'All Roman soldiers must be right-handed, so their shields are uniformly on the left to maintain formation. A horse's bare neck lets a cavalryman's shield hand rest on its muscles and guide the horse while he fights.'
'You sound quite the expert.'
'I've read the classic advisories, from Xenophon to Virgil.' 'I hear the Celts have women who ride. Women who are war riors!'
'Which makes us the Roman and they the barbarian,' he jibed. There were long heaps of fodder near the fortress wall, the hay roofed with tile for protection against flaming arrows. In one corner was a kiln and clay. Adjacent was a blacksmith shop, next to that a glassworks, and beyond a carpentry woodshed perfumed with wood chips.
'It seems less a fort than a factory,' Valeria remarked. 'It has to be, at civilization's end. The army has taught the world. A full legion employs architects, surveyors, plumbers, doctors, stonecutters, glass fitters, coppersmiths, armorers, wagon makers, coopers, and butchers.' He grinned. 'My dreams of martial glory have been tempered by my duties managing manure.'
They mounted to the top of a tower, Clodius guiding her around a wooden ballista and its rack of darts and pointing north. 'Out there, Valeria, is the end of the world.'
She looked. There was a ditch directly below the wall, pools of rainwater at its bottom. Then a steep slope beyond to a valley, all shrubs and trees chopped away to preserve a clear field of fire. Nor could there be surprise: the view beyond seemed endless, a rolling panorama of moor and wood and fen and ridge and ponded water, as clearly seen as if she were a bird. Wisps of smoke marked a few crude farmsteads. She could still see the line of Galba's cavalry, riding north, lance heads glinting in the sun.
'How did the ambushing Celts ever cross this barrier?'
'That's what Galba hopes to learn from Braxus.'
She looked back at the fort and the roofs of the village clustered beyond. Then the river, and beyond that the villa where she'd been married. What a little empire a praefectus governed! She turned to sight along the Wall itself, a bony crest that stretched as far as the eye could see. 'Like the back of a dragon.'
'A poetic description,' Clodius complimented. He was standing quite close, perhaps closer than proper now that she was married, and yet his torso gave her some protection from the breeze and so she was secretly glad of it. He was trim, rather handsome, and solicitous in his eager way. Clodius was like a brother, she told herself, and Marcus still remote, like her… father.
She was shamed at the sudden comparison that had come unbidden into her mind.
'It's designed to intimidate as much as block,' Clodius went on. 'Any barbarian realizes the army that built this bulwark represents a power beyond their imagination.'
'We're safe, then.'
'Life is never safe. It's the possibility of death that defines life.'
'You sound like Galba,' she teased. 'Are you acquiring his grim-ness?'
'His realism.' He touched his throat.
She turned around, taking it all in. 'This fortress is grim like your soldier's philosophy, isn't it? It has the feel of a prison.'
'It doesn't lock us in. Only others out.'
'So I want to see this wild world of yours, Clodius. I want to go riding!'
He was watching her carefully, trying to mask his attraction. By the gods, if he were Marcus, he wouldn't leave her alone for an instant, let alone the first day of their married life! He was guilty at his fascination, but escorting her was like rubbing a wound, exacerbating it and yet soothing it at the same time. Now he kept his voice carefully flat. 'With your husband's permission, perhaps.'
'South of the Wall, to be safe.' She gave him an impish smile, trying to seduce his support. 'A test of your defenses.'
