The rest of his men have surrendered and are under arrest in Condercum.”
“Marha!” I whispered. I bowed my head, blinking at it: Gatalas dead.
“Why didn’t anyone tell us?” cried Leimanos, jumping furiously to his feet.
“Don’t be stupid!” snapped Facilis. “It was over in two days. And no one would tell you anyway. You’d have gone to help him. A hundred and twenty Roman soldiers dead. Gods and goddesses! I tried to tell them!”
I went out into the changing room and began to put my clothes on. “Leimanos,” I said, “we need to summon all the men.”
“What do you think you’re going to do?” asked Facilis, pushing his way out after me.
“You think it better that they hear this in the taverns?” I asked, fastening my muddy trousers. I picked up my shirt and glared at the centurion. “You need have no fear, Flavius Facilis. I will not throw away the lives of my men chasing vengeance. As for Gatalas, he revenged himself.” I pulled the shirt over my head.
“Revenged himself for what?” demanded Facilis. “For being sent to a cavalry fort in pleasant country, well fed, well housed, well paid? A hundred and twenty Romans dead! And most likely because of a few words!”
“It needed forbearance!” I returned. “He was willing to keep his oaths if he could trust his commanders.” I sat down and pulled my boots on. Banadaspos was weeping as he did the same; Kasagos was muttering a prayer for the dead; Leimanos was dangerously silent. “Eukairios, as soon as I’ve spoken to the men, we need to write some letters.”
Eukairios coughed. “The letter that told me this… it came with some dispatches. They arrived by special courier. That’s why I had to see you at once.”
For a moment I couldn’t think what he meant. Then I understood: the dispatches had included orders to Comittus, Longus, and Facilis to arrest me, disarm my men, and confine us all to camp.
I turned to the Romans. “If the dispatches tell you to do anything,” I whispered, “do not do it yet! Please. Give me a chance to calm things down. Longus, if my men hear of this in the taverns, they will set on yours and there will be bloodshed. I need to assemble the dragon and speak to them all tonight. Tomorrow morning we can sacrifice to Marha and read the divining rods, and also pray for our friends’ souls. After that you can do what you like. The men will be steadier and will not do anything foolish.”
The three others were silent for a long moment. Then Longus said, “We weren’t going to read the dispatches tonight-were we, Comittus?”
“No,” agreed Comittus, understanding at once, “no-we’ve had a tiring day, and it’s getting late. We were planning to have a few drinks and get some rest.”
“And we can’t open them tomorrow morning, either,” Longus continued. “If you’re having some ceremony to worship the gods, obviously we ought to join in. The dispatches can wait until lunchtime.”
I looked at Facilis.
“May the gods destroy those dispatches!” he said. “I’m certainly not reading them tonight. I’m going straight to bed.”
“I thank you all,” I said, warmly, then grabbed my coat and hurried out into the chill dampness of the night to assemble my men.
When the drums had dragged them from the bathhouse, taverns, and brothels of Cilurnum, they heard the news with groans of dismay and wails of grief. There were no shouts of anger, though, and the promise of a sacrifice in the morning, and the chance of reconciling everything with the will of the gods, reassured them. They went to bed reminding each other that the divining rods had promised Gatalas death in battle, but had offered them, and Gatalas’ dragon, life and prosperity. I was aware, during the night, that the Asturians were mounting a guard on the fort walls overlooking our wagons-but it was unobtrusive enough that no one was offended.
We were woken before dawn by the sound of trumpets in the fort sounding the call to arms. I rushed out of my wagon, jumped on the nearest horse without bothering to saddle it, and galloped wildly up to the gate, cursing silently. I was sure that the Romans must have decided to read the dispatches after all, and I was afraid of the consequences. But as I reached the north gate, Comittus’ messenger came rushing out of it. “Lord Ariantes!” he shouted, waving his arms so that my horse reared up and put its ears back. “Lord Ariantes, the tribune wants you to come at once! And give the numerus the signal to arm! The barbarians have crossed the Wall!”
It was very strange, setting out with Roman troops to catch a party of barbarian raiders. I had imagined it before-the raising of the alarm, the rush to arms, the gallop across country in what was hoped to be the right direction, the snippets of news gained from frightened shepherds or farmers, and finally the moment when you crest a hill and see the enemy there beyond you. I had imagined it because I was curious to know what it must be like for them, my opponents. Living it for myself was so like what I had anticipated that it felt unreal, as though I were imagining it again.
The signal fires told us to go east; the shepherds and farmers we questioned told us that there were “thousands” of the raiders. We left the road and moved across the hills to the north, sending out scouts to locate the enemy. In fact, we might have dispensed with their services: the enemy made no effort to conceal themselves. We arrived at the town of Corstopitum, the principal town of the region, to find it overrun. It was the beginning of December, a dull gray day, but not too cold: we stopped at the edge of a slate-colored wood and looked down at a city surrounded, smoking here and there with fires.
Corstopitum had been built as an army fort to control the bridge over the Tinea River, where the main road north meets the main road west. The fort was decommissioned when the Wall was built just north of it, then recommissioned for use as a supply base: in the time between the two events, the thriving city had grown so much that the old fort had been swallowed up, and the new one had to be laid out as two irregular enclosures on either side of the main road north, instead of the neat rectangle used everywhere else. The bridge was now held by a large party of invading cavalry-we could see the gleam of their whitewashed shields-and the fort appeared to be under attack: the fires were concentrated about it, and the marketplace before it was full of armed men.
Longus, who had been riding beside me, groaned. “They’re after our pay,” he said.
It seemed that the quarterly pay for all the men stationed at all the forts along the eastern Wall was distributed from Corstopitum, and that this huge sum of money was almost certainly inside the besieged fortress. The garrison at Corstopitum was an auxiliary ala called the First Thracians, a part-mounted force of five hundred men. It could be assumed that the number of the raiders was at least twice as great, or they would not have attacked at all.
Comittus bit his lip and struggled to control his horse. He had been pale and feverish with excitement during the ride, and his mood had communicated itself to his flashy black stallion, which was snorting and fighting with the bit. “There hasn’t been a raid this big for years and years,” he said unhappily.
Facilis snorted. “A quarter’s pay for four thousand men’s a tempting target. I doubt they meant to fight us as well as the Thracians for it, though.”
One of my scouts galloped up and drew rein. “They are all in the town, my prince,” he announced. “They have a detachment on the bridge, to prevent the townspeople from escaping, but no one in the hills.”
No danger of a flank attack. Comittus had said that the Picts were in general lightly armed, and that their leaders tended to be jealous of one another, so that their fighting was disorganized. I judged that whatever their number might be, the enemy could not overwhelm us. I consulted the Romans on the order of battle, and then gave the signal.
The drums rattled and the dragon divided in two, eight squadrons to the left of the Asturians, eight to the right. Then the beat slowed to the steady one-two rhythm of the walk, and we rode out from the shelter of the trees and started down the hill.
The Picts noticed us quickly and began to pour out of the town. They didn’t want to be caught in the narrow streets, trapped between us and the Corstopitum garrison. I kept our pace slow: I didn’t want to fight inside the town either. The enemy grouped themselves into irregular squadrons along the road facing us. They began to beat their spears against their shields and give hawklike screams. They were indeed lightly armed-spears, swords, and wooden shields that had been whitewashed or painted in bright colors. Only a few of them wore mail, and not one in a hundred had a helmet. They wore the same kind of gray-brown tunics and trousers and the same checked cloaks as I’d seen on the shepherds who crossed the Wall to go to market, but as we drew nearer I noticed that they’d covered their faces with the blue and green war paint that had given them the name “Picts.” There were too many of them to count-eight, nine hundred? — and then the first wave moved forward, and more Picts came from the city, and more.
