far as we could see. It crossed the river on top of a bridge that was built of the same stone and ran directly into the walls of Cilurnum. I stopped, looking at the fort, and Comittus and Facilis, who were riding beside me on the road, stopped too. Behind us, the drummer gave the signal to halt.
“That’s the bathhouse,” said Comittus, pointing at a building just outside the fort by the river. He’d visited the place before. “It’s a good one. The water’s good at Cilurnum, too-there’s an aqueduct that carries it right through the camp from end to end, and flushes the latrines. And there’s a water mill under the bridge, which grinds all the grain for the fort…” He coughed. “If you want grain, that is.”
I nodded. My heart had risen at the sight of Cilurnum. The fort itself was the standard affair: a rectangular wall, four gates, watchtowers. I knew that inside it there would be the usual two main streets, the usual headquarters building and commandant’s house facing each other in the center, and the usual narrow barrack blocks laid out in neat grids. It was, I knew, more than half-empty. It had been manned by an auxiliary ala, the Second Asturian Horse, but most of them had been posted elsewhere, and there were only some five squadrons remaining. A village of the kind found around every Roman fort sprawled messily to the south. But the fort’s setting beside the shallow brown river was beautiful, and to its north there were meadows-lush, intensely green, dotted with large trees. “We can put the wagons there,” I said, pointing to them.
Comittus and Facilis both looked at me, Comittus in surprise and Facilis in exasperation. “You won’t need the wagons anymore,” Comittus told me. “You know yourself that all the letters have been written and everything’s arranged. The Second Asturian Horse have left plenty of space in the barracks for you and them both.”
“You’re going to have to start sleeping in houses sometime, Ariantes,” said Facilis. “We can’t have Roman auxiliaries parked in wagons behind their own fort. Particularly not on the wrong side of the Wall.”
I set my teeth, looking at the stone walls. I thought of sleeping in them, night after night. I thought of watching the seasons change, fixed in the same place, unmoving, buried like the dead. I had known that the Romans would expect us to follow their ways now, that they would ride us, as the saying is, with the curb bit and the iron bridle. Facilis was going to be in charge of the ordering of the camp, and the remaining Asturians were subordinate to Comittus. There were thousands of Roman troops in the region, more than enough to put down any mutiny. But this change was too great and too sudden, and as I looked from the walls back to my companions, I felt all at once certain that it was not something I had to bear. Comittus and Facilis might use force against us for many reasons-but this wasn’t one of them.
“Not tonight,” I said. “Not yet.” I snapped my fingers for the drummer to give the signal and started Farna forward again. The drums rattled, and the dragon began clattering and jingling after me.
“But… really… I mean…” said Comittus, spurring after us, “barracks are much more comfortable… ”
They did not give up easily. We rode into the fort-we had to, to get to the fields, since the Wall cut us off from them. There the senior decurion of the remaining squadrons of the Second Asturian Horse came hurrying to meet us, followed by his men and most of the inhabitants of the village. (Despite their name, the Asturians were not from Asturica in Iberia; their ala had been raised there originally, but that had been a long time ago, and they themselves were mostly born in the village.) The decurion was a mournful-looking dark man of about my own age, named Gaius Flavinus Longus-I strongly suspected that “Longus” was a nickname, as he was one of the tallest and thinnest men I’d seen. Comittus and Facilis rushed the polite greetings and at once enlisted his help to explain to me why we couldn’t sleep in our wagons. He had put a considerable amount of work into getting the barracks ready for us, and argued more hotly than either of the others. I nodded, ignored them all, and took the men out the other gate of the fort into the fields. The three Roman officers, with most of the Asturians and villagers, followed us, exclaiming in amazement at our obstinate savagery.
“You bastards don’t even entrench!” Facilis shouted at me, while I held Farna in the place I’d chosen for the main fire and waved the wagons round. “Listen, Ariantes, you’ll have the damned villagers in and out of here every hour of the day and night, and half of them are thieves! And what are you going to do about latrines?”
“Lend us a few shovels, and we’ll dig a spur from the ones in the fort,” I replied, not looking at him.
“You’re entitled to the commandant’s house, you know,” Comittus coaxed. “At least, we could share it. It’s a big house, and it has a hypocaust and a private bath-house with a steam room, and the last man there put in a very fine floor on the dining room…”
“Comittus,” I said, “when I was in my own country and a prince, I did not have a big house with a mosaic floor. I do not need or want one now. Perhaps in the winter, if it is very cold, barracks and hypocausts may seem worthwhile. Not tonight.”
“May I perish!” exclaimed Longus, exasperated at seeing all his preparations for us laid waste. “What sort of people have they sent us?”
I looked at him. “They have sent you Sarmatians,” I told him. “We are accustomed to live in wagons.”
“They’ve sent us a pack of raving lunatics! Who else would prefer filthy carts to good stone barracks blocks? Oh, now I know what the problem is! You’ve mistaken Cilurnum for the madhouse you escaped from!”
The Asturians, and the villagers, laughed. My men heard it. They interpreted the comment to each other. I noticed Facilis’ face losing its red, swollen look as he became alarmed. He had called us similar things, and worse- but he was a senior officer, and knew exactly how far he could go, and in what circumstances. He would never have used language like that in front of an audience that understood.
I looked at Longus thoughtfully. He’d climbed onto his horse to greet us, and he was armed and wearing a shirt of mail. But he was off guard. “You should not insult us, Flavinus Longus,” I told him quietly. “Remember we must work together.” I raised my hand to keep my men still.
“I can say what I li-” began Longus.
Farna leapt sideways at a touch of my heel, and I swept my lance out and across to knock the decurion off his mount backwards. I turned my horse almost on top of him, and drove the point of the lance into the earth about two inches from his shoulder. By the time he’d recoiled from it, I had my sword out and at his throat. “No killing!” I shouted in Sarmatian. It had been sudden enough that the Asturians were all still gaping, and my men had not yet tried anything on their own. But I could hear the sound of the bows being strung behind me.
“You should not insult us,” I told Longus again. He looked up the sword blade into my eyes. His face had gone gray. “If you ask Marcus Flavius Facilis, he will tell you how we deal with those who insult us. You should not have said that, on first meeting us, in front of all your men and mine. It was foolish. But I am sure you would not have said it if you knew us better, and you regret it now.” I took my sword away from his throat and put it back in its sheath, then pulled my lance up and backed Farna away.
Longus picked himself up, still looking gray. One of my men had caught his mount, and I nodded for it to be returned. It was probably just as well we’d had a small, manageable incident of this kind. The Asturians had obviously needed to have it pointed out to them that it was dangerous to speak to Sarmatians as they would to Romans. I was sorry to have humiliated Longus, but at least he was junior to me and would have to admit to himself, when he’d calmed down, that he should not have used that tone to the commander of another unit, however stupidly he thought I was behaving.
“We swore to the emperor that we would fight for him,” I told the Romans. “We did not swear to sleep in tombs. We must already learn to patrol and guard, to stay in one place, to use money. We must learn another language and another way of life. This we can and will do. Flavius Facilis, we can build a palisade, if you want to keep people out of our camp; we can make adjustments. But you must forbear a little.”
They gave in, though Facilis still muttered darkly about latrines, and we parked the wagons in the field, loosed the horses, and settled down into a new life.
The first months we spent in Cilurnum were all I could have hoped for: quiet and monotonous. All my forebodings about trouble in the North seemed utterly misplaced. We could test the shape of our new position with very little to disturb us. The legate had given orders that the men were not to leave the fort-which we interpreted to mean not just the fort itself, but the village and fields attached to it-without the permission of the camp prefect. This was a measure to control us and protect the civilians of the region, but I was glad of it: it gave us a chance to learn the customs of the land before we entered it.
The chief business of the fort was the collection of tolls. Cilurnum was the official crossing point for neighboring people with business on the other side of the Wall, and it also provided the main bridge over the north Tinea River. Every day a trickle of shepherds drove flocks through the gates, and on market days there would be a crowd of carts, all paying their copper to the men on duty to be allowed to cross.
The fort was also responsible for manning six mile-castles-small fortlets that were built every mile along the
