Hammer of Rome Page 4

  At last. On the far side of the fort, at the very edge of Valerius’s vision, a ripple seemed to pulse through the mass of civilians taking shelter there. He recognized the emerald plumes of the Asturian cavalry wing in their midst, with what must be the Ala Petriana on their flank. Their only obstacle was the fleeing mass of women, children and grey-haired ancients, but the cavalry didn’t hesitate and old and young alike fell shrieking beneath their swords. It must be soon. Valerius bit back the words. Even as he watched, the collapse began, slowly at first, but gaining momentum with every passing second. Drawn by the screams, the rear ranks of the multitude facing the initial breakthrough turned to go to the aid of their loved ones, followed by more and more warriors. Whatever organization existed among the defenders was gone.

  ‘It is finished,’ he said to Naso. He looked up at the sun and noted with satisfaction that the whole action had taken less than half of an hour. ‘Let it be known that any who lay down their arms are to be spared.’

  ‘There’s still the central fort,’ the camp prefect pointed out. ‘It looks as if it might be a tougher nut to crack.’

  ‘Tell them to bring forward the artillery.’

  A diminutive figure rode up on a full-sized horse. ‘Valerius!’

  ‘Welcome, Gaius Rufus.’ Valerius smiled. ‘You are just in time to witness a great victory.’

  ‘I know,’ the little man said sourly, ‘but in case you haven’t noticed, while you’ve been enjoying the entertainment some bastard is attacking your baggage train.’

  V

  Cathal watched the battle until the point where the Roman formation divided and sub-divided to form a human ramp that allowed their comrades to cross the walls. It was enough. An exhibition of discipline, power and sacrifice no Celtic tribe could hope to emulate. Was any force on earth capable of stopping these people?

  The image continued to fill his head as he rode to join his men in the little tree-lined gully where they hid not far from where the Romans had set up their baggage park. It lay midway between Brynmochdar and the temporary marching camp Cathal had studied the previous night and discarded as a possible target. He dismounted before he entered the gully and led his pony through the undergrowth and down to the shallow stream that cut eastwards to the far side of the hill. After a few minutes a shape seemed to sprout from the ground and he was staring into a pair of wide intimidating eyes caught between a mass of dark hair and a twitching beard.

  ‘I don’t mind you trying to scare me, Ranal,’ the Selgovae chief growled. ‘But you frighten my beast at your peril.’

  The face creased into a grin. ‘I just thought to surprise you, Cathal.’

  ‘Well don’t. You know I don’t react well to surprise. I near took your head off. How are the lads?’

  ‘They’re grand, lord. But bored. They wish we could have stayed with the Brigantes. There were some lasses …’

  ‘They’re better off out of it.’ Cathal’s voice contained a brutal edge fuelled by what he’d watched. ‘By nightfall those lasses will either be in Roman beds or wearing Roman chains.’

  Ranal led him to a point where the gully widened and another stream joined it from a secondary valley where the warriors had corralled the group’s ponies. Men wearing the same rough undyed wool tunics and trews as their chieftain sprawled on the damp ground or squatted in small groups. A few murmured a welcome, but most just watched in silence. They were Cathal’s sword brothers and they had served and fought together long enough to need no words.

  Cathal had equipped every man with the long sword that proclaimed him as a member of the tribe’s elite. A champion. The Selgovae smiths had put every shred of their craft and their skill into creating those slim, ash-grey blades from the finest metal they could source, iron brought in finger-length ingots at great price from faraway Noricum. Cathal had ordered the felling of hundreds of trees to make the charcoal to heat the forges, and the sacred glades where the smiths worked rang with the clatter of hammer upon metal for an entire season. The swords made them rich men, but the fierce loyalty they bore him had not been bought, but earned. Cathal was their leader, but these men were a brotherhood. A brotherhood of the blade. All but one.

  A dirty white robe drew Cathal’s attention, like a maggot among a swarm of wasps. As his eyes became accustomed to the gloom he suppressed a shudder of distaste at the sight of Gwlym’s pus-filled craters and filthy, food-stained beard. The druid’s head turned, sensing his presence, and a smile flickered on the cracked lips. The Selgovae felt Gwlym’s scrutiny and distaste turned to anger. It occurred to him that somewhere on the way north the priest might suffer an unfortunate accident, but that could wait. The gully took a sharp turn here and the broad bank that loomed over the clearing had collapsed to leave a mound of raw red earth. Cathal unslung his massive sword and handed it and his reins to Ranal before bounding nimbly up the mound until he could see a man lying among the bushes at the top of the bank.

  ‘How many guards have they left, Colm?’ he called softly.

  ‘Too many,’ the man said sourly. Colm was one of the oldest of the band, past thirty, but he had the eyes of a man ten years younger. ‘Come up and have a look for yourself.’

  Cathal took a leap to his left away from the collapse and wriggled his way upwards until he lay beside the other man. Colm parted the bushes in front of them so he could see down a broad, tussocky slope of rough grass. On the flat ground at the bottom of the hill, perhaps four hundred paces distant, a temporary township of tents and wagons sprawled across the landscape. Smoke from hundreds of fires rose to be tugged away by the breeze and Cathal guessed that, somewhere in that mass, smiths worked to repair armour and weapons and bakers were busy baking bread for the legion’s evening meal. A tempting target, at first sight, for a man who had led more raids than he could see wagons. But that was before you noticed the bank and ditch that surrounded the baggage train and the hard-eyed guards who stood amongst the outer wagons. He looked closer, saw oval shields and chain armour. What the Romans called auxiliaries, mercenaries who fought for money and land, but no less dangerous for that.

  Cathal stared at the camp with fierce concentration. He’d promised the Brigante king a demonstration, but nothing he could do here would affect the outcome at Brynmochdar. To attack the baggage train in camp would be to risk the lives of every man who followed him and those men could be vital to his cause in the seasons to come. The Selgovae would need leaders when the Roman eye turned north, as it undoubtedly would. And not just the Selgovae. It might be that the men who lay in the wooded dell below him were not just his bodyguard and his friends, but the foundations of an army.

  Yet a promise was a promise and Cathal was a man of his word. He studied the massed wagons and their defences with even more care, seeking some weakness. His attack must necessarily be in daylight, otherwise it would be wasted entirely. Brynmochdar’s defences would not last till nightfall. Anything worth taking or burning was stored in the centre of the camp and that meant breaching the walls.

  The auxiliaries had cleared the land all around the camp so that even a mouse would have trouble approaching it unseen. As he watched, a man trudged from the gate and dropped into a crouch over a darkened patch that must be a narrow trench. Interesting. They’d dug their soil pit outside the walls. He considered the possibility for a moment before discarding it. Lifting a single man as he struggled to rid himself of a turd was hardly going to help Guiderius. His nostrils twitched at the faint scent of human excrement on the breeze. Yet that breeze also carried something else. A soft whinny.

  For the first time his eyes were drawn beyond the circle of wagons and piles of supplies. Horse lines. His father had told him that every Roman cavalryman needed at least one remount and preferably two, so there would be hundreds of the beasts. The old man had talked in extravagant terms of the qualities of the animals he’d seen while campaigning against the Romans with Venutius. Of their beauty, their speed, length of leg and back, and depth of chest. The horses of
the gods, he’d called them. They made the little ponies the Celts rode look like cattle and could run them down with as much ease. Cathal had sent emissaries south laden with gold in an attempt to barter in vain for a single Roman stallion. He’d even considered stealing one, but he was assured the Romans protected these revered animals with the same ferocity as the legions protected their eagle standards.

  Yet now he was within touching distance of a Roman horse park with a hundred of his best men, and he had given his word to Guiderius that he would hurt his enemies. He gave a grunt of pleasure and Colm turned to him with a quizzical look.

  ‘I know that sound,’ he said. ‘What have you seen in that dangerous great heap of manure you’d like to lay your hands on?’

  Cathal grinned. ‘I’d thought to relieve them of an anvil or two you could carry home and heft up Middle Hill as a gift for the sky gods.’

  ‘Aye, that would be my talent right enough,’ the other man said with lugubrious satisfaction. ‘Beast of burden. Why do I have a feeling the reality is going to be even less appealing?’

  ‘All of our lads can ride.’

  ‘That would seem about right.’ Colm’s voice dripped with irony. ‘Seeing as we came here on horseback.’

  ‘But how many of them could ride a Roman horse, do you think?’

  Understanding dawned on the other man’s face. ‘Ranal, Arwan, they’re as good on a beast as any; say about half. But Roman cavalry horses? We ride without saddles and they have those great four-pronged monstrosities. And what about bridles? There’ll not be a man without a broken bone before we reach the Cheviot. Better to kill them than steal them.’

  Cathal considered the suggestion. It was good enough advice. Who knew what problems they’d cause among the hills. But killing those fine beasts? And killing took time. Besides, now that he thought about it he deserved one. More than one. ‘Then I’m thinking we’ll take fifty.’

  Valerius’s horse was blown out by the time the baggage camp came into sight. There’d been no chance to summon the cavalry, who were still in the process of consolidating the victory at Brynmochdar, so he’d gathered together what he had: Gaius Rufus, what was left of his escort – around twenty men – and a few aides. They’d galloped south to where he’d sited the baggage, close enough to supply the attacking troops but well beyond the range of any sortie from the besieged Brigantes. Or so he’d thought.

  ‘Lord,’ Rufus’s shout broke the silence. He pointed to the east, beyond the fort. ‘They’re taking the horses.’

  Valerius looked around. His signaller had gone with the men towards the fort. Too late to call them back.

  ‘To me.’ He led the way in a curve past the southern corner of the baggage circle with ten men at his back. Ten men against fifty, as it turned out. The guards assigned to the horse lines lay in the grass at the bottom of a shallow slope with their throats cut. Spare horses careering everywhere and the enemy already mounted. All except one.

  If it hadn’t been for that one, Valerius would have ordered the charge despite the odds. A towering figure holding an enormous sword in two hands as if it were a toy. He stood apart, silhouetted against the light, and faced ten mounted enemies as though willing them to come to him. Valerius had met Celtic champions before, faced them man to man, smelled their sweat and tasted their blood, and cut them down. This one was different. Not a warrior. An executioner.

  ‘Leave them,’ he said. ‘We’ll send the cavalry to hunt them down.’

  He could feel the consternation in the men around him and even as he said it he knew it was a lie. The cavalry would take a day to recover after their charge and the battle that followed. The inner fort had still to be taken and the victory at Brynmochdar must be consolidated. Was it worth fifty horses to ensure that? The answer, of course, was yes, and it was a logical answer. But Valerius had a moment of doubt. Could his decision have been influenced by another factor as well as logic? Fear. It was a question he knew would come back to haunt him in the night.

  But one thing he knew for certain. He would meet the swordsman again.

  And one of them would die.

  VI

  From the walls of the inner fort King Guiderius watched helplessly as his outer defences disintegrated and his strategy for holding the Romans at bay was ripped to pitiful shreds amid a welter of carnage. The speed of it stunned his mind.

  This was the greatest army a Brigante chieftain had ever led. At first he had smiled at the Roman commander’s audacity in challenging countless thousands with a single legion. Then his heart quailed as he watched the efficiency and ease with which they crossed the walls that had been built at the cost of so much labour. Even then he had hope. Surely so few could not defeat so many?

  How wrong could a man be? First the compact arrowhead formations of legionaries smashed the great mass of Brigante warriors into smaller segments, as if Guiderius’s vaunted army had been a simple kitchen pot. Long triple lines of the great rectangular shields followed, herding the confused bands of warriors like cattle. Herding them to the slaughter. He could hear the combined grunt as the Romans won every pace of ground, and the screams of the men who died trying to hold it. As the lines moved forward they left a broad smear of blood and a carpet of writhing bodies in their wake. He understood Rome could be cruel, but he had never envisaged this merciless ferocity. The deadly little swords with their needle-sharp triangular points made no distinction between class or rank, bravery or cowardice. Men who threw down their spears in surrender died beside heroes who fought to the last.

  A new round of panicked screaming broke out in the north. Guiderius ran along the earth parapet in time to see a column of Roman cavalry erupt on to the hill, brushing aside the few spearmen he’d posted there. Without breaking stride the big horses transformed from column to line, fanning out to the right and left. It was here the women and children had fled in their thousands to escape the deadly hail of missiles from the Roman artillery machines. Panic rippled through them like a breaking wave as the thundering hooves and bright spear points bore down on them.

  ‘No!’ The plea erupted from his throat without conscious thought, but no amount of words or prayer would stop what was about to happen. One rider appeared in advance of the others. He lined his beast on a dark-haired woman fleeing in blind terror with a baby in her arms. A sword flashed bright as it rose and fell and the woman crumpled. The infant flew from her arms and rolled for a few paces before it disappeared beneath the merciless hooves. A great howl from the charging cavalry sent a chill down the Brigante king’s spine and he watched helplessly as the slaughter of the innocents began in earnest.

  ‘Guiderius,’ a voice screamed. ‘You must help them.’ The plea from his wife, Regina, shattered the wall of lethargy that seemed to surround the Brigante king.

  ‘Every man who can hold a spear with me!’ He snatched one of the seven-foot weapons from a rack on the parapet and raced for the gates with his personal guard sprinting in his wake. Warriors manning the walls rushed to join them.

  A frustrating delay at the gate made him want to beat the gatekeepers aside as they toiled to remove the massive oak bar. Out on the muddy sward hundreds of women and children, the elderly and the infirm swarmed towards the fort in a great crowd, seeking sanctuary. Guiderius felt a moment of alarm that leaving the gates open might have been a mistake. But it was too late for second thoughts.

  Ignoring the distant screaming he led his men through the fleeing Brigantes using the butt of his ash spear to thrust aside the tardy. The refugees had smashed the cattle pens in their panic and cows, sheep and pigs ran unchecked among the rest, their panicked cries adding to the cacophony.

  Guiderius saw his opportunity in an undamaged section of fence. He dashed to one end of the wooden railing. ‘Form line on me,’ he screamed. ‘Form line.’ A hundred men had followed him. So few? But it must be enough. When the line was set he ran to the centre and forced the butt of his spear into the earth with the leaf-shaped iron point towards the en
emy. He experienced a heartbeat of terror that the very people he was trying to protect would simply overwhelm the pathetic rank of spearmen.

  The ground shook beneath his feet and thunder filled his ears. Emerald plumes bobbed and waved among the mob of fugitives and the cavalry were close enough now for him to hear the metallic thwack of sword on bone above the screams of the maimed. At the last moment the fleeing refugees veered to left and right away from the barrier of spears.

  A woman ran across his front with half her face sheared away and one eye dangling like a glittering ornament. A gnarled ancient, eyes wide in disbelief, displayed the blood spurting from his severed wrists before he collapsed in the mud at Guiderius’s feet.

  Suddenly there were no more refugees, just a line of horses, their riders’ bearded faces snarling beneath green-plumed pot helmets, bloody swords raised and ready. Guiderius tensed for the moment of collision that must sweep them away like chaff in the wind. Thirty paces. Twenty. He had to will himself not to close his eyes. Then a surge of blessed relief as the Roman cavalry wheeled away to the flanks in search of easier prey. One man rode along Guiderius’s front within spear range roaring with laughter as he rattled his sword blade across the glittering points.

  ‘Back,’ Guiderius shouted, aware the respite might only last seconds. ‘Back to the fort.’

  They backed away, a walking fence of spears, with fleeing women and children passing through their ranks towards the safety of the inner fort. Guiderius had a view across the table top of Brynmochdar. His once proud warriors still struggled in the twin grip of the advancing legionaries and the cavalry who abandoned their slaughter of the civilians to end the last vestiges of Brigante defiance. From time to time, men burst from the trapped mass, fleeing blindly from the carnage, twisting and turning like hares, only to be overtaken and cut down by the heavy cavalry swords.