The War at the Edge of the World (7 page)

‘Atrectus! Get your spear up off the dirt – it’s not a walking stick!
Shoulder!
’

‘Sorry, centurion.’

Valerius Atrectus was a red-haired joker, and had often been on punishment back at Eboracum. Beside him marched Genialis, a slow, simple soldier who generally did whatever his friend told him. The worst men in the century for discipline, but Castus regarded them now with a contented smile. All of them were his brothers, his men, his command. He looked towards Evagrius, swinging along in the lead now with the standard over his shoulder, the hornblower Volusius marching behind him, Timotheus bringing up the rear with his easy stride. He checked his section leaders, each in charge of a group of eight: Culchianus, Attius, Januarius… All of them looked keen, disciplined and strong. Ready for whatever he might order. If Castus himself felt the tremor of uncertainty about what lay ahead, he was determined not to let it show.

Flavius Strabo, the governor’s secretary, rode his pony along the verge of the road, remaining apart from the soldiers. Castus had hardly been aware of him when they had left the fort, and the man had said nothing to anyone since. Now, as he moved back up the line, Castus regarded him carefully, sizing him up. He was a smallish, fattish man, and sat badly on his pony, seeming to bounce up and down in the saddle as he rode. He probably only had a year or two on Castus, but with his shining bald forehead and trimmed beard he looked much older. Plainly dressed, but he wore an expensive-looking gold brooch securing his cloak. Castus had little experience of civilians, and little desire to expand on it – they were generally a nuisance anyway, interfering with the work of the professionals. Fine for selling beer or cattle, good at running inns, but little use for much else.

But as he dropped back into the rhythm of the march, Castus was aware that the secretary surely knew much more about the task ahead of them than he did. Stepping down off the roadway, he paced up alongside the man on the pony, trying to appear casual.

‘So how far is this villa we’re heading for then?’ He was not sure how to address the secretary –
dominus
would surely be too deferential. As far as he knew, the secretary was only a minor functionary.

‘Oh, quite a bit further. Three hours’ march beyond Isurium, I’d say.’

Castus nodded. More or less as he had expected. They could break the march for a few hours at Isurium and make it to the villa before evening.

‘And what about this envoy we’re meeting?’

The secretary turned in his saddle and glanced down with a wry smile. ‘The less you know about him the better, I’d say!’

‘Fair enough.’

They moved on in silence, Castus falling in with his men again. He was sure now that Strabo knew something important about the mission ahead. Either he wanted to talk, but had been ordered not to, or he had been ordered to communicate something but was playing a waiting game. Either way, if the fat man wanted to be mysterious, he would let him. Castus could happily march twenty or more miles a day in complete silence with barely a conscious thought in his head, but the secretary appeared to be the kind of man who disliked silence. Give him a few more miles, Castus thought, and we’ll see how well he fares with his attempt at secrecy.

He did not have long to wait. As they passed the eleventh milestone and trees closed around the road the secretary eased himself off his pony, wincing, and walked along with the reins in his hand.

‘Do you think we might take a short rest, centurion? It’s getting rather hot!’

‘Don’t worry about that. My lot can march five hours a day like this. They haven’t even broken sweat yet. We’ll rest when we get to Isurium, but if you want a lie down you can catch us up later.’

‘Oh no, oh no…’ the secretary said. He was kicking up dust as he walked along beside his horse. ‘I’m sorry if I was a little short with you earlier. You must understand there are some things I can’t openly discuss – or not yet, anyway.’

‘That’s fine. We’ve all got our orders.’

They walked on a little further in silence. The trees opened out, and the sun shone hot on their backs. Castus had been exaggerating about his men not sweating. He glanced at Strabo: the desire to talk, whatever prohibition might be on the man, was almost palpable. Fine then; he would draw him out gradually.

‘Tell me about these Picts,’ he said.

‘Ah, yes, the Picts,’ said Strabo, widening his eyes. They had drawn ahead of the marching men a little – Castus had not noticed. He reminded himself not to become complacent about this man.

‘They live in the mountains and valleys, beyond the settled peoples to the north of the Wall of Hadrian,’ the secretary said. ‘Originally they were a collection of feuding tribes – Caledones, Miathi, Venicones and others. They fought many wars against Rome over the years, whenever they banded together and tried to resist us. Then the emperor Severus marched into the north with a huge army. You’ll have read about Severus in the histories, I expect?’

Castus, of course, had read nothing at all, but he had heard of Severus. The emperor who had built the current walls of Eboracum fortress. He nodded.

‘Severus campaigned against the tribes for three years, but failed to completely subdue them. His army burned and destroyed their homes and killed anyone they could find.’

Castus gave an appreciative grunt. He had always liked the sound of the emperor Severus: clearly a commander who knew the best way to treat savages.

‘However, Severus died before he could finish the campaign. The tribes, though, had been driven back into the deepest and most inaccessible valleys of their homeland, and there they remained for most of the last hundred years, fighting among themselves, giving us no trouble.’

‘Good result,’ said Castus. As he had expected, the secretary had shrugged off his fatigue in his enthusiasm to talk. ‘So then what?’

‘Around twenty years ago,’ Strabo said, ‘there were reports of a new power in the north. The scattered tribes had banded together, to threaten the more peaceable tribes allied to Rome. They were led by the Miathi people, but their neighbours called them the Picts. A name to instil terror, it seems.’

‘Doesn’t sound very terrible,’ Castus said. A thought struck him. ‘Do they really paint themselves blue, these Picts, and ride around in chariots? That’s what somebody told me…’

Strabo chuckled dryly. ‘Oh, they do that on occasion, yes. You’ll see for yourself soon enough. Anyway,’ he went on, ‘the Picts soon overran the settled tribal lands and threatened the northern frontier of the empire. At the same time, the Franks were raiding the coasts of Gaul and Britain too. So, as perhaps you recall, when Maximian was appointed co-emperor he sent a man called Carausius to deal with the situation.’

‘Carausius,’ Castus said. He recognised that name at least. The usurper who had seized control of Britain and the Gallic coast and declared himself emperor of the west. Even now, more then a decade after Carausius had fallen, the legions of Britain were still held in suspicion for their support of him. That, Castus had often thought, explained the poor condition of the province, the dilapidated fortresses, the demoralised troops.

‘Shortly after this Carausius claimed the purple, he appointed one of his own officers, Aelius Marcellinus, to drive back the Pictish marauders. By this time they were under the leadership of a high chieftain, Vepogenus, of the Miathi royal house.’

‘This is the one who’s just died?’

‘Yes – I’ll come to that. Anyway, Marcellinus, a Spaniard by birth but married into the native British aristocracy, conducted a short but very effective campaign along the Wall of Hadrian. He broke the Pictish attack, and concluded a series of treaties with them to ensure peace. He also, ah… entered into what you might call a pact of brotherhood with Vepogenus.’

‘A Roman officer did that? Not a good idea.’

‘Well, it was effective. The Picts respect personal bonds much more than political treaties, you see. However, the following year Carausius was murdered by Allectus, one of his own ministers, who took over power, and soon afterwards seized Marcellinus and charged him with treason. Marcellinus managed to escape, crossed over to Gaul and surrendered to the new Caesar Constantius, giving him vital information about the usurper’s forces. And then, as you surely know, Constantius led his army across the Gallic Strait and reconquered Britain for Rome.’

Castus nodded, trying to take it all in. He was aware that Strabo’s story had strayed some distance from the matter of the Picts. Or had it? He was beginning to suspect that this man Marcellinus would become a lot more prominent very soon.

But Strabo had fallen back now, coughing and rummaging in his saddlebag for a canteen. Castus left him and marched on at the head of his men. Clearly the secretary felt he had said enough, for now.

Fields of young wheat edged the road, and from every copse rose the smoke of a hearth fire. This was rich farming country. Two miles further on, the men let out a ragged cheer as the town of Isurium appeared ahead of them. The walled settlement lay along the bank of a river, its tiled roofs bright in the morning sun. There was even an amphitheatre, the topmost tiers showing white above the trees.

The citizens were used to soldiers passing up and down the road, and few turned to watch as Castus led his century along the muddy main street and out by the far gate to the grassy bank of the river.

‘Timotheus,’ he called, ‘fall the men out. We’ll rest here for four hours. Set a sentry watch of ten men by rotation, and the rest can strip off and bathe in the river, eat and sleep if they can.’

The optio saluted and strutted away, already crying out the orders. Castus dropped down to sit in the grass. His feet were hot and sore in their binding of wool and leather, but he felt invigorated by the morning’s march. The muscles of his legs were hard and strong, and he relished the prospect of another three hours on the road. Glancing over at his men, he was glad to see that they were eager too. They spilled into the river, shouting and kicking up spray.

Strabo was a different matter. The little secretary sat on a flat stone, pulling his boots off and examining his blisters.

‘Better to keep them on,’ Castus told him. ‘They’ll hurt more later, otherwise.’

‘Too late,’ Strabo said, before coming over and sitting beside the centurion. Together they ate cheese and hardtack and drank the watery vinegar wine, as the sound of splashing water and laughter came from the river.

‘They appear so young, your soldiers,’ the secretary said, squinting at the men in the water.

‘Eighteen, the youngest,’ Castus told him. ‘Couple more nineteen.’

‘And yet we train them to fight and to kill, and send them off to die for our empire…’

Castus paused, mid-chew, and stared at the man beside him. What could be wrong with that?

‘How old were you, centurion,’ Strabo asked, ‘when you first killed a man?’

Castus swallowed. ‘Sixteen or so,’ he said. ‘At least, I thought I’d killed him. Hit him over the head with an ironbound bucket and he went down like a sacrificial ox. It was half a year before I found out that he wasn’t dead after all…’

Strabo had a pained expression on his face. He shook his head sadly. Castus just shrugged – he had not mentioned that the man he had hit with the bucket was his own father. He had been in Troesmis, a hundred miles down the Danube, and already signed up with II Herculia before he met a man from his home town who told him that the old man had survived. Good thing too – patricide was a terrible crime before the gods. Even so, he had never made any attempt to seek forgiveness.

The two men sat in silence as they finished their meal. The soldiers were climbing from the river and running on the bank to dry off. Castus wondered if Strabo had taken offence at his remarks – he had no desire to drive the man away from him, and still had much he wanted to learn.

‘You were telling me about the Picts,’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes – I’m sorry…’

‘After this man Marcellinus made his treaties and pacts and so on with them, what happened?’

‘Yes, well. After the murder of Carausius, and the arrest of Marcellinus, the Picts believed that the treaties were invalid. When Constantius regained the province, he found that the Picts were once again raiding along the northern borders. In addition, a number of… shall we say
renegades
, officers of the former regime whose loyalties placed them beyond pardon, had fled into barbarian country and taken shelter there. These men were now aiding and directing the Picts in their assaults upon our territories.’

Castus sucked breath through his teeth. He had known of deserters from the legions, or criminals, crossing over to the barbarians. But never of Roman officers doing it. ‘Treasonous bastards,’ he said.

‘Absolutely treasonous, yes. But for them, you see, the Picts were their only refuge. They hoped, I suppose, to regain their former lands and wealth with a Pictish army to support them. One can only marvel at their stupidity!’

‘Something like that,’ Castus said grimly. Once, in Persia, they had captured an enemy town and found three men with the garrison, former legionaries taken prisoner who had gone over to the Persians to save their skins. The men had been crucified on the walls that evening, and nobody had grieved for them. Traitors were no better than vermin.

‘Anyway, faced with this threat, the Caesar Constantius in his great wisdom sent his Praetorian Prefect against the barbarians, assisted by Aelius Marcellinus. Between them they managed to repel the attacks and reimpose peace along the border. Marcellinus, by force and persuasion, restored his pact of brotherhood with the Pictish chieftain, Vepogenus. That was eight years ago, and ever since the peace has held.’

‘But now this Vepogenus has died of eating mushrooms?’

‘Died of something. We can only hope that mushrooms were involved, and not something less… natural. Despite the treaties, you see, there are many among the Picts who long to avenge themselves on Rome for their past defeats. Besides, one or two of those renegades I mentioned are still with them, and as you can imagine they still plot and scheme.’