Arthur Imperator (15 page)

Once
again, we took hundreds of prisoners as slaves, and we liberated several hundred unfortunates who had been taken as captives by the Picts in their raids into Britain. These I sent back with a token guard, also herding back to the border country the sheep and cattle that had been stolen over the years. We devastated the Picts’ settlements, burned their crops and left dozens of them on crucifixes at the wayside. It was my reminder to the miscreants when they emerged from their hiding places in the heather that the law of Arthur, their emperor, was to be obeyed. 

XXX Skegga
 

Allectus
slipped into Saxon-held Colchester disguised as a food pedlar. He was leading two pack mules loaded with wheels of cheese and strings of smoked sausage, portions of which provided the bribes to get him past the gate guards and to the commandeered library that served as accommodation for their warlord, Skegga, who was seated, prising with his seax knife at the semi-precious stones that adorned the cover of an ecclesiastical book.

“I
have come to speak of matters more important than sausage and cheese,” Allectus said directly, causing the Saxon to look up in surprise. “I bring this for you, lord, with knowledge of where there is much, much more.” Allectus placed a soft leather pouch on the table and tipped out an assortment of gold coins and small ingots, scattering them across the surface where some rolled against a painted iron-and-leather helmet.

“You
have my attention.” The voice was a rumble in keeping with Skegga’s appearance. He was a broad-chested, bearded man dressed in trews and a fur tunic, his arms bare, tattooed, and sporting a dozen circlets of gilt and bronze. His fingers were thick with battle rings made from the weapons of defeated enemies, and Allectus noted that two digits on the man’s left hand were missing.

“I am Allectus, and I was Arthur’s tribune and treasurer until he tried to cheat his people,” he said. “I operated the mint in this town and another in Londinium and I can lead you to hidden riches.”

Skegga
stirred and slid his seax into its white sheath on his hip. Allectus understood the gesture, and bowed. “What is your price for these revelations?” the big Saxon asked.

“I
have more than just gold to offer you, lord,” said Allectus smoothly. “I have knowledge of Arthur, his dispositions, his weaknesses, his battle tactics. I can help you trap and defeat him.”

Skegga
stared at the traitor, assessing his smooth sleekness, his serpent-like head and the oiled hair with its long ponytail. The Saxon recognized the man’s innate confidence and electric energy even as he felt contempt for his treachery. A devious one, and dangerous, he decided. But, if the gods choose to send him gold and information of his enemies, so be it. “Tell me,” he commanded. And Allectus did.

He
started by explaining about money. He told the Saxon how his workers were skilled at blending silver or gold with bronze or brass into an alloy that looked like pure gold. This they beat into the correct thickness, cut into square blanks and stamped them with hammer and die to impress each side of the coin before trimming the edges into a round. “The point of having your image on the coin, lord,” he said in a direct appeal to the Saxon’s vanity, “is to validate your rule to the people who handle the coins and to claim your place in history.”

“Yes,”
said Skegga impatiently. “Where is the gold?”

Allectus
nodded, and took him to the mint where he had secretly walled in three iron-bound leather and elm wood chests of coin. “Two for you lord, one for me, and I can lead you to more, in Londinium.”

Skegga
debated taking it all, but then thought he’d hear what the tribune had to say about Arthur’s battle plans. He could always kill Allectus later and take the bullion. Allectus knew what the Saxon was thinking and was unworried. He settled down to talk about Arthur. Retrieving the hoard in Londinium would have to wait until the city was taken.

Two
days later, unnoticed, Allectus slipped aboard a trading ship and sailed for Gaul. With him were two hired guards and several heavy leather bags of gold. The traitor was heading for Maximian’s camp in Belgica, and would make a similar offer to him regarding the treasure he had hidden in the walls of the mint in Rouen. Then he would accompany the Roman on his invasion of Britain and become a vassal king, once Arthur was dead. It was a pity to give up a couple of chests of bullion, he thought, but he could hardly have knocked down a building wall without being noticed, and anyway, he might well get his loot back in the future.

The
Romans were powerful enough, he knew to defeat both Arthur and the Saxons. He would be Britain’s next Imperator. He grimaced to himself. The Saxons could have their consolation prize of cheese and sausage.

XXXI Hibernia

Maximian
regarded Allectus with distaste. This oily fellow thought he could bribe an emperor with a few stolen coins? His other offer, to reveal Arthur’s battle plans, was childish. Maximian’s own legions would crush the Britons without outside help from a traitor. He was debating whether to have Allectus flogged for insolence, or merely have him ejected when the tribune, floundering for an advantage, hit a nerve. “I can also tell you, Imperator, where the sacred Eagle has been hidden,” he blustered. “Arthur dare not display it publicly, so he has hidden it against it being stolen and used by his enemies.”

The
statement was a lie, but Maximian was not to know that. “Indeed?” he drawled, “and where is that bird hidden?”

“It
is cemented behind a wall in his fortress at Chester, lord,” lied Allectus. “I can lead you to the exact spot.”

The
claim was enough to give Maximian pause. Reclaiming the lost Eagle would be a fine feather in his cap and by itself would almost justify an expedition against the rebel emperor. “We’ll see,” he said abruptly. “Take this man and keep him safe. He is not to leave the camp.”

With
the tribune departed, Maximian ran over his own plans again. His shipyards on the Scheldt and Meuse were producing well, building a fleet of invasion barges that could be towed behind a flotilla of galleys. He probably would not have everything in place for an invasion before winter arrived, but he would certainly be set for a springtime campaign.

He
would launch the troop barges from the same port on the north coast of Gaul that old Gaius Julius had used, for the shortest, quickest crossing, and aim for Dover and its harbour. At the same time, while Arthur was distracted by that invasion fleet, he would dispatch a stronger force across the German Sea from the Rhine directly into the Thames estuary, arrow-straight for Londinium. With Arthur’s forces engaged at the coast, Maximian could count on seizing the capital before heading south to trap Arthur between his two invasion forces. Then, with Arthur out of the picture, he could regroup and settle the barbarian Saxons’ nonsense. 

They
could cooperate and agree to become his vassals, in which case he would cede some of eastern Britain to them, to be held against other incomers, or they could be enslaved and work the land for the conquerors. It looked very positive, and he smiled grimly as he thought of Arthur, that bastard Carausius as was, hanging off a crucifix in Londinium.

The thought of a crucifix was in the mind of the Hibernian sea raider Muirch. He was in a desperate situation, trapped away from his longship with just three companions and faced with several dozen well-armed British horse soldiers. He should never have gone back, he was thinking bitterly. Now he was a dead man, and these Roman-equipped cavalrymen would likely nail him up for the damage he’d done.

It
had been a successful expedition, especially if you counted losing two of those irritating women, who’d been taken prisoner after splitting off from the main group. He’d seen his chance and sailed away early, to help the Britons catch them and that bishop Candless fellow from Pictland. After all, it would be fewer people to share the plunder.

But
Muirch had not been satisfied with the take so far, and seeing two women working a hillside garden, had hissed a command, slipped his ship ashore behind a sheltering headland and taken three men with him to capture them. Slaves or rape victims, it was all the same. And matters had gone well at first. The women were hunted down and made fast, Muirch approvingly looked them over, young and attractive enough. Might as well do them now, away from the envious eyes of the rest of the crew. The four men took turns on the turf, ignoring the screams that turned to wracking sobs, but a cavalry troop alerted by the raiders’ burning of a village two days before were patrolling, and heard screaming they at first thought was the noise of gulls. On a hunch, they checked further and the Hibernians were trapped. 

“Put
down those spears,” the centurion ordered the two raiders who carried the long weapons. “And throw down your knives.” Muirch cursed. He had not brought a sword, just a knife, because he had not come ashore to fight. He looked past the soldiers at the sparkle of the sea, green-blue under the sun. That way was Hibernia, his peat-smoke village, his dogs and his several wives. He would not be seeing any of that again. But he knew life went on after this body died. He would go to the feasting halls and join his dead friends. Better that than life as a shackled slave, digging fields and hewing wood through a life of misery. Now for the bridge of swords. 

He
drew his knife and ran hard at the cavalrymen. It was a suicide, but it was brief, and mercifully quick. The centurion was seated on his horse a length ahead of the line of his men. Muirch ran at him, the soldier raised his heavy spatha and kicked his horse’s sides. The animal reared forward, the spear struck violently upwards and Muirch’s ribcage shattered open like a splay of white fingers that suddenly blossomed red. The raider’s vision dimmed, and far to the west, across the water, a dog raised his muzzle to the sky and howled in misery.

XXXII Concrete

Since
learning that concrete will set under water, I had been spending time sloshing about in the River Ouse that ran by our fortress in Eboracum. Several of my engineer officers were as intrigued as I, especially since I had outlined my plan to them, and we had consulted what Roman writings we could find to determine the best mix.

The
technique was simple enough: mix the ingredients and pour them into a wooden form. For my plan, to make pilings that stopped just inches below the surface of a river, the form had to be adjustable, but it was possible. The concrete set in two days in fresh water, faster in salt, but even in fresh water it was ready for load bearing in five or six days. When we believed we had the technique perfected, we loaded a baggage train with what we needed, formed a small column of engineers and infantrymen and set off south. We were going to trap a tribe of Parisi who were especially lawless and who lived close to the wide River Humber. When threatened, they would scatter into the marshes. Our troops could view them from the opposite bank, but if we attempted a crossing, the Parisi fled. An approach from the southern side of the river was difficult, and nearly impossible to attain surprise, as they maintained sentries miles to the west.

The
only other approach, from the south, was over open marshy terrain that made it difficult to stay concealed, and the tribe would flee into sheltering fens and marshes to the east.

Once,
the Romans had used a ferry between their own two settlements, which commanded the river crossing of the Ermine Street high road. These camps were offset to allow for the flow of the tide, which drove the ferry up or downstream depending on its ebb or flow. Now, a ferry would not suffice for us because we could not move enough troops over at one time. Nor did I have enough small ships at my disposal to launch a miniature invasion. It would have to be ground troops, and I wanted to try my concreting idea, which was simple, and might work. If it did, I could see military applications in its future.

We
deliberately arrived after dusk, and I ordered that no cooking fires be lit in sight of the opposite bank, which was a mile and a half away. At the lowest tide, the water was no more than chest deep, but that and thick mud was still enough to delay our troops, wreck the surprise and to be dangerous for men in armour. My plan was to secretly construct underwater pilings to support wooden bridgeworks that we would lay immediately before marching over our hidden new bridge. 

A
local fisherman who had a line of fish traps at the river’s second big bend gave us valuable advice. The river, he said, emptied slowly but returned four times faster, getting deeper by the height of a man every hour. A few men could wade across in the half hour when the sandbanks were fully exposed, but there would not be time enough for any sizeable force to cross before the incoming flood made it impossible. The engineers took timings and depths, and opted to shorten the distance we needed to bridge by dumping tons of rubble in the yard-deep mud to form an underwater causeway that would give us footing from the north bank to a big sandbank island in mid-river. From it, we faced the deepest part of the flow, which even at low tide was roughly as deep as a man is tall. That was where the engineers would set the forms and pour the underwater concrete piers, working by night so the Parisi would not observe our actions.

The
work took just three nights. We took care to avoid observation and even put the settlement on the north bank under guard so word could not be carried out. When we finished the work, we had an underwater causeway to the water-covered shaped pilings that would accept and hold a wooden roadway. I had the engineers cover the tracks made on the bank by the rubble waggons, and to the casual observer nothing was different, but we still kept curfew on the settlement, and camped our troops out of sight to the north.

We
returned to the river four days later, when the concrete had cured. The tide was lowest just after dawn, so our pioneers, roped together against the outflow, established themselves on the big sandbank and floated out the wooden roadbed. The operation went perfectly. Working in the dark, the engineers placed the roadway onto the pilings, and when the first wolf light dawned in the east, our punitive force waded across, scrambled up the steep riverbank and formed up. The attack on the Parisi village was a total surprise. The tribe’s outlier sentries miles away in their tower to the west had not raised any alarm, expecting our troops to cross far upstream.

We
took several dozen captives for the slave market, collected a number of silver torcs of twisted gold and silver that their headmen wore on arms and necks, and burned their settlement of feral-stinking thatched huts that were so primitive they used thin animal skins as window coverings. A soldier brought me an item he’d found by digging in the disturbed dirt by the fireplace of one hut, a beautiful green glass orb, as round and perfect as an apple, probably Grecian work. It weighed heavily in my hand. It would be perfect for Guinevia and her viewing meditations, I thought. 

We
made camp a few hundred yards upwind of the settlement to regroup and ready for our long march back to Eboracum, as I planned to mop up any tribesmen on the south bank of the river. That night, we celebrated.

“Gentlemen,
the bridge work was highly satisfactory, and a technique we can use in the future when we need a surprise flanking attack, or a secret means of escape,” I told my officers. “Well done. I think we have an amphora or two of excellent Rhenish wine somewhere in the impedimenta that we can share with our wet troopers. They need to be warmed up and this thin Parisi beer is not going to do the job.”

All
went well as we returned to Eboracum, but Guinevia was waiting in our quarters with a concerned look on her face. She had evidently been viewing something distant, she had her obsidian block and water bowl on her work mensa, and I noticed with a shiver that the remains of a vapour cloud, signs of her working magic, was dissipating in the air above it.

She
wasted no time. “I have seen Maximian in Gaul,” she said urgently. “He was studying charts with two officers. Then, without my volition, I was viewing busy shipyards on two wide rivers, the harbour at Bononia where once I made sacrifice, and the traitor Allectus in a stone town on a broad river.” I questioned her carefully, but she had no interpretation of her visions, which did not surprise me as she never wanted to understand what her mind’s eye was viewing, only to report it. Translating what she was seeing, she had asserted often enough, could muddy the vision. She wanted merely to see what she saw and let others decide what it meant.

I
had enough faith in my sorceress to know that each part of what she saw in a single session was usually related, and it seemed obvious enough: Maximian was building an invasion fleet, he was probably gathering land forces into winter quarters in Bononia, the coastal stronghold that once was mine, and Allectus was almost certainly in Rouen, from the description of the bridge and tall buildings Guinevia gave. This last made me pause. Allectus had operated a mint there on the Seine riverfront, and that would be a likely reason to return to the town. He was creating coinage, or maybe retrieving what he had hidden when the Romans swept across Gaul and drove us out. I recalled that he had escaped the town by water, bringing ingots and coin to me in a couple of cargo vessels, but there was no guarantee he had emptied the whole mint, and might well have hidden some bullion to be retrieved later.

Guinevia
was watching me, studying my face as my thoughts flew across it. “All will be well, we’re too far into winter for Maximian to mount a campaign just yet,” I reassured her. “He’ll have to wait for several months, and that will give me time to prepare for him, as best we can.” Secretly, I feared the worst. We were too weak even to drive off the Saxons. If the legions of Rome came at us, we would surely go under. Maximian need hardly rely on guile. He could land even against the bulwark of the Saxon Shore fortifications, although that would cost him some lives. 

I
tried to put myself into his military cloak and assess what he would do. He could come ashore in the southeast, as Constantius Chlorus had tried, but my fleet had been too good for him in the Narrow Sea, and a disastrous turn of the weather had wrecked his bid to sail into the Thames estuary.

He
might attempt a landing in the west, after going the long way around, but I doubted that. It was too long an overland march, through hostile territory, to seize Londinium. More probable was a landing in the eastern seaboard, but the Saxons held Colchester and their reaction to a rival invader was unknown. On balance, it was not Maximian’s best option.

I
thought again about the man, a stubborn soldier whose previous plan had been wrecked by weather and naval forces. He would likely use a similar strategy again: a diversionary raid in the west or south to draw us off and then a direct thrust at the capital, either up the Thames or across the southeast coast after making the shortest crossing of the Narrow Sea.

The
Thames river was my first concern. Maximian’s fleet could sail into the estuary and straight up the river to the heart of Londinium. Our fortress was on the rising north bank, with one Thames bridge across which Watling Street ran. The city was a century past its pinnacle of prosperity and the waterfront was silting up, but it was still a walled stronghold with forum, several public baths, basilica, Mithraeum and my palace inside the riverfront citadel that defended the north end of the bridge. An invader would choose to land on that north bank, as much of the south side was marsh. On balance, I knew I had to make my defences downriver, before Maximian’s fleet could come close to the city. So I went to Londinium and I sent a courier to Grimr and his squadron to meet me there.

Even
in the chill of winter, the city was stinkingly noisome. Sewage ran in the streets, the populace, despite the public baths, was an unwashed and lawless mob, so that people locked their doors at night for fear of robbers. Fires were a constant hazard, and the place was just recovering from yet another plague that had filled the cemeteries in the east and northwest. We did not maintain a large garrison in the city, it was a place of craftsmen, merchants, slaves, officials and sailors, for the pool of London was a long-established harbour for traders from far places. 

I
took a barge trip along the river, and decided I must meet any invader 20 or more miles east of the city. We would get warning, because my defences of the Saxon Shore included beacons and signal towers to alert our forces. If the enemy did manage to put troops ashore on the north bank, I could meet them with cavalry. If they tried to sail right to the capital, I had a plan, and I explained it to my cavalry commander Cragus.

The
wide river estuary narrowed dramatically at a point about 25 miles from the city, and swept around a four-mile, U-shaped bend that would force an invader to slow at the first, southerly turn as he came into the long reach of the base of the U. Midway along that reach, I planned to position a floating boom of heavy logs, chained together. I would not, however, order it deployed until the invaders had sailed past, then I would close the door behind them.

The
logs would be towed out by Grimr’s galleys, and would use the force of the tide to swing across the river. If it were ebbing, the end of the boom would be secured more to the east. If the tide were flowing in towards the city, I would have men stationed further west to secure the loose end. Grimr’s galleys would provide protection as the boom was emplaced.

With
the boom cutting off any retreat, the invaders would be sailing into a second obstacle I would have fixed across the narrowest part of the U-bend, where the river turned north. This would be a double barrier, prepared ahead of time and reinforced with a pontoon bridge on which I would station artillery and fire archers. I would also deploy ballistae on each bank, where the river narrowed, to plunge flaming pitch and large rocks into the invading fleet.

As
a further measure, I would have fire ships stationed at each end of the trap. Whichever way the wind was blowing that day, I could send in blazing vessels to entangle themselves with the invading armada. With luck, we should sink or burn most of the enemy before they could come to land. For those that did get ashore, I would have cavalry and infantry waiting. I only hoped I had sufficient forces for the task, for our regular cavalry had been sadly depleted by the Saxons, and our heavy cavalry was not numerous. As my barge pulled steadily back through the biting wind to Londinium, I pulled my cloak tighter around me, and shivered. If my naval trap failed, the chances were that I would lose Britain to Maximian. I was unconcerned about dying in battle, but quailed at the thought of my Guinevia enslaved, of my son Milo likely executed, of wasting what my soldiers and I had fought for to bring Britain from under the Roman heel. All of that made a shudder run through my bones. The Romans were coming, and I was gambling again that I could somehow stop them. I needed the gods to send me an ally.