The War at the Edge of the World (39 page)

He glanced around for the cornicen, and found him staring dumbly forward at the massacre. He shook the man by the shoulder.

‘On my command,’ he said. ‘Sound
charge
.’

‘Great gods,’ Diogenes said. ‘This is a slaughteryard.’

Castus just nodded. They were picking their way back across the field of the battle, supervising a work detail retrieving the bodies of the Roman dead from among the slain. Behind him, he heard Diogenes cough, and then vomit noisily.

‘Sorry, centurion.’

‘Don’t be. Happens to everyone, now and again.’

Rain was falling, the water mixing with the blood to form huge red lakes between the mounds of corpses. Castus felt his boots sinking into the mire, sucking with every step. All across the valley the dead were piled, some individually, others in great mounds where they had fallen fighting or trying to flee. Dead horses and shattered carts too. There were even more at the lower end of the valley, where hundreds had pressed together trying to enter the defile. There, the ground was invisible under bodies piled two and three deep. Some of the Picts had crawled under a thicket of thorn bushes to try and escape, but archers had surrounded the thicket and filled it with arrows until all were dead. Down the defile it was the same, where the Alamanni had come whooping and howling like hunters to spear the packed fugitives below. The slaughter stretched to the river ford, where the cavalry had pursued the fleeing Picts through the shallows.

‘Are all battles like this, afterwards?’ Diogenes asked, wiping his mouth.

‘Sometimes.’ Maybe Oxsa, Castus thought, although he had been unconscious and had not seen the full extent of it. Those running skirmishes against the Carpi on the plains beyond the Danube had never resulted in such a massacre. The trapped Picts had died in such numbers it looked as though some god had destroyed them.

‘I’ve read of battles often,’ the schoolteacher said, ‘but never expected anything like this. Truly an awesome and terrible sight.’

Castus grunted. Rainwater was running down his neck. To his left, two men of his century were moving through the corpses, methodically killing any Picts that remained alive. To his right he saw a dead man sprawled against a chariot wheel; the top of his skull had been sheared away, and wet brain matter spattered the spokes. Another man, his torso cleaved from shoulder to ribcage, his face oddly placid-looking. One Pict was sitting up, slumped with his legs stretched before him. His stomach was ripped open, and entrails pooled pink and grey between his thighs. Castus nudged the corpse’s shoulder with his boot, and it rolled over backwards.

He knew the meaning of his dream now. The dead had returned to petition him for vengeance. They had got it, surely. The fury of battle had left him now, the killing rage of that last murderous charge across the valley, but Castus still felt the solid satisfaction of a job well done. Even so, there was a well of emptiness inside him. He and the men of his century had seen little real fighting, just killing; few of the Picts had put up any resistance to the charge, and those who had were easily despatched. Many had thrown aside their weapons and tried to surrender, but none had been spared. The Roman line had crossed the valley like an iron roller, crushing everything in its path.

Was that why he felt this hollowness? To watch a battle, but not truly participate, was hardly fulfilling. Then he remembered that other part of his dream: Cunomagla coming to him, accus­ing him. What did that signify?

He cleared his throat and spat.
Dreams!

‘What will they do with all these dead men?’ Diogenes asked. ‘Theirs, I mean?’

‘Leave them to rot,’ Castus said. ‘They’re food for the crows now.’

There was a mood of festival around the camp fires that evening. The victory had been total: fewer than a hundred Roman dead for thousands of the enemy slain. The troops had gathered around the imperial tribunal, and built a battle trophy of piled shields and weapons taken from the enemy chiefs. They had cheered the emperor as he had stood before them, shouting out his name and saluting him
imperator
. But they had cheered Constantine too, when the tribune had ridden back from the river ford at the head of his cavalry, his horse sprayed with blood to the withers. The victory belonged officially to the emperor, but in the hearts of the troops his son had taken  the palm.

Out in the rain the pyres were still burning the bodies of the Roman dead. Castus stood beside the cooking fire, drinking beer from a wooden cup, listening to his men recount their tales of valour and destruction. He had been like that himself, he thought, when he had been a common soldier like them…

‘Centurion Aurelius Castus?’

He turned, and saw two men in the white cloaks and uni­forms of the Protectores, holding the hilts of their swords. One of them spoke again, in a heavy Germanic accent.

‘You must come with us, centurion. Now, if you please.’

The German went before him, the second man behind, and they led Castus away through the camp, between the scattered fires.

‘What’s this about?’ Castus asked. He did not expect a reply, and got none.

Out through the camp gates, they marched down the hillside towards the battle valley. Smoke from the funeral pyres hung in the rainy night air. On the slope where the imperial tribunal had been raised stood a large pavilion. Guards surrounded it – troopers of the Equites Scutarii, standing beside their horses. The Protectores led Castus through the guard lines and up to the door of the tent, and the German raised the flap and gestured for him to enter.

Warm light met him as he stepped inside, and the sweet stink of death. Oil lamps hung from tall stands around the leather tent walls. There were around a dozen men gathered in the smoky glow, and only half of them were still alive. Officers, mostly, with a few finely dressed civilians among them.

‘Domini!’ Castus cried, saluting, and jolted to attention, feet spread, thumbs hooked in his belt.

‘You may relax,’ said the notary, Nigrinus. ‘This is not a formal occasion.’ Castus was not at all surprised to find him here.

‘This is the centurion I mentioned, who was held captive among the Picts,’ the notary went on, addressing the gathering. ‘He may be able to help us, I think.’

The six dead men were laid out on the floor of the tent, some still wrapped in bloodstained blankets. All of them were Pictish warriors; the scar patterns were livid on their greying flesh.

‘These,’ said a very fat man in a damask robe, flapping his palm at the corpses on the floor, ‘are some of the bodies of the Pictish notables our scouts managed to recover from the field.’ He had a high fluting voice. A eunuch, Castus realised. ‘Study them, and see if you can identify any of them.’

Castus stepped closer to the row of corpses. The first was hard to recognise, as his face had been gouged almost entirely away. The ruined black features told him nothing, but the patterns etched onto the skin appeared familiar. Castus remembered the gathering in the meeting hut, the fug of smoke and sweat, the men gathered around the fire.

‘This is one of their chiefs, I think,’ he said.

‘Name?’ Nigrinus prompted. Castus shrugged and shook his head, and the notary scratched something on a waxed tablet. The others kept themselves away from the little man slightly, Castus noticed, even the senior officers. Almost as if they feared him. One of the civilians was wearing scent, or carrying a scented cloth perhaps – the floral aroma mixed with the cloying stink of dried blood.

The next two corpses were completely unidentifiable. Both warriors, faces contorted in death. Castus leaned across them, peering intently. Maybe he remembered them, maybe not. He shook his head again.

The fourth man he knew at once. The long goatlike face was crusted with blood, but there was no mistaking the stiff red mane of hair.

‘This is their king. Talorcagus.’

‘You’re sure?’ the eunuch asked eagerly. Castus nodded. A brief stir of pleasure and congratulation passed around the group of officers.

‘These last two I don’t know.’

‘What about the king’s nephew?’ one of the tribunes snapped. ‘Drustagnus, isn’t it? Do you see him here?’

Castus looked again, then shook his head. ‘No, dominus. He’s not here.’

‘Then he has escaped us!’ another voice said. The group of officers jolted to attention suddenly, and some of the civilians made little gestures of salute. The tribune Constantine strode from the tent door and stood before them. His face was flushed, as if he had just been exercising, and he held a gold cup of wine. ‘There was no way anyone could have slipped past my cavalry. Clearly this Drustagnus got clear before the rout began!’

‘Indeed, dominus,’ Nigrinus said, raising his stylus. ‘And one more, of course, is missing. The woman who started this revolt. Cunomagla.’

Castus clenched his jaw, and tried not to show his discomfort. Constantine stepped forward and leaned over to gaze at the corpses laid on the floor.

‘Such formidable warriors,’ he said, ‘stirred into hopeless rebellion by the wiles of a female…’ For a moment he appeared almost sad, staring down at the bloodied face of the dead Pictish king. Then he straightened up.

‘It is an unnatural thing,’ he declared, his voice slurring slightly, ‘when a woman gains primacy over a people! Nothing but evil can result from a woman’s rule. Do you not agree, centurion?’

Castus stiffened his back. ‘Of course, dominus,’ he said.

Nigrinus gently cleared his throat, stepping forward with his tablet and stylus; the others officers moved aside. ‘If I may, dominus?’ he asked.

Constantine nodded.

‘Some of the prisoners,’ the notary continued, ‘have suggested that their fugitive leaders may have taken refuge at a hill fort belonging to one of them. I believe this may be the same place that our centurion here was held captive…’

‘Excellent!’ Constantine declared. ‘Then our centurion will go with the mounted scouts, find this place, and lead us to it.’ He flung an arm across Castus’s shoulders, squeezing tightly. Castus smelled the fumes of wine on his breath.

‘We’ll track this she-wolf to her lair,’ he said. ‘And when we find her, we’ll put her to death!’

Through dappled sunlight, the line of horsemen emerged from the trees and rode out onto an exposed spur of the hillside. The ground fell away sharply to their left, rocky out­crops showing between the thick heather and the trees, and below them the green flatlands spread north to the shore of the estuary. The water glittered in the noon sun. Above, to the right, the hillside rose steeply to a line of bare brown summits.

‘Are you sure that’s the place?’ Victorinus asked, reining in his mount and pointing.

Castus nudged his horse closer to the tribune. He was still uncomfortable on horseback, and slid slightly in the saddle as he stretched up to stare along the line of the hills. Behind him, the six mounted scouts of the Equites Mauri scanned the slopes nervously.

‘That’s it,’ Castus said. He had scouted several forts in the four days since the battle on the ridge. Most were little places with tumbled walls, clinging to the rocky summits above the valley, abandoned now. Once or twice Castus had almost believed he recognised the location – but this time he was sure. From the hillside spur he could make out the high stone but­tress surrounding the lower enclosure, and the inner wall rising within. Squinting in the bright sun, he could even see the thatched roofs of the larger huts in the central enclosure. He felt a lurch in his blood. The last time he had seen this place, he had been a hunted fugitive. Now he had an army behind him. He remembered what he had said that night to Cunomagla.
If the gods allowed, I would be marching in their ranks
.

A thin trail of smoke rose against the sky. The fort, at least, was still occupied.

‘All of the chiefs who’ve surrendered in the last few days are sure that Drustagnus has gathered a last warband,’ Victorinus said. ‘Probably only a few hundred men. We’ve got cavalry scouting all the valleys around here, so they shouldn’t be able to slip away. It looks like a strong position, though. Direct assault along the ridge might be the only way to take it.’

Castus glanced at the tribune. Victorinus was a sober, sol­dierly officer, with a broad face and a big chin and very large, prominent teeth. The men of the cohort privately called him
the mule
. But Castus trusted him. He nodded.

‘Tribune,’ he said, ‘I’ve been over the hill crest and along the valley at the far side. That was the way I came down when I escaped.’ The horses shifted, twitching their ears. Victorinus motioned for him to continue.

‘If a small party of men, a century or two,’ Castus went on, ‘got down into that valley, I think they could climb up to the walls undetected. If the defenders were distracted, they could get inside and open the gates…’

Victorinus frowned more deeply, running his tongue over his teeth. ‘An artillery attack from the ridge to the north-west might be distraction enough,’ he said. He fixed Castus with a narrow stare. ‘You’d have to lead the assault party yourself, though. Do you think you could do it?’

‘I think so, dominus.’ Castus tried to recall the events of that night: his escape from the hut; the killing of Decentius and the wild scramble down over the walls and palisades; the race through the hills with the dogs behind him… He tried not to think of what had happened before that: his promise to Cunomagla. Was she really inside the fort now?

‘I don’t remember it too clearly,’ he said. ‘It was dark. Misty. But I’m sure I could find a way in.’

Victorinus nodded, satisfied. ‘Think your men are up to it, centurion?’

‘Yes, dominus. At every command we will be ready…’

The tribune stared up again at the walls of the fort on the hilltop. He bared his long teeth in a grimace. ‘Incredible to think you were a captive in that place!’ he said.

‘Yes, dominus.’

‘I admit, I can hardly imagine what it must have been like to be a prisoner of such savages.’ He shook his head, hissing grimly. ‘The indignities they must have forced on you…’