In the Shadow of the Wall (43 page)

They rounded Brude’s house. One of the Romans went inside but soon came out, obviously disappointed at the poor fare he had found. They headed towards the village. Then Castatin saw Cruithne.

The giant warrior was walking towards a line of Roman soldiers, spear in hand, shield held low as if he was out for a walk and not expecting danger. The Romans, so many of them that Castatin could not count them all, stopped, waiting to see what the big warrior would do. The soldier holding Castatin said something which made his two companions laugh.

Cruithne stopped. In a loud voice, he began speaking to the Romans. They obviously couldn’t understand him but Castatin was able to pick out a few words, even from a distance. It was a boastful challenge Cruithne was issuing, telling his foes they were women, cowards who were not fit to wipe his arse. Then he raised his spear and hurled it towards the Roman line. Shields were hurriedly raised. The spear struck with a bang and was diverted high over the heads of the soldiers. Then Cruithne drew his great sword. Slowly, he dragged the point across the earth in front of him, marking a line that he was daring them to cross.

Castatin expected the Romans to throw their javelins, the
pila
that Brude had told him about, but these soldiers from the sea did not seem to have any. Instead, twarchers stepped forwards, drawing their bows. Cruithne sneered at them but when they fired he had to move quickly. One arrow lodged in his shield, the other narrowly skimmed past his head. Standing where he was could only end in his death so, with a bellow of rage, Cruithne charged at the archers who immediately turned to run, ducking behind their comrades.

Castatin could not believe it. One man was charging at a small army.

There was a crash as Cruithne hit the Roman line. Castatin expected a quick end for the giant Pritani but the Romans were standing still, not moving forwards as they usually did, probably because they did not expect this lone madman to attack them. Cruithne’s hammer of a blow with his shield knocked one soldier back, a mighty swing of his sword hacked into the sword arm of the man to his right and he had carved a gap in the line. He hewed left and right. Incredibly, the Romans began falling back to escape him.

Castatin shouted encouragement, which earned him a box on the ears. He heard one of the soldiers muttering what was clearly a coarse oath. Cruithne was in the gap, fighting like a demon. Then there was a yell from the Pritani shield wall as fifteen more warriors charged into the attack.

Cruithne heard them. He turned to yell at them to remain where they were but they had seen him force the Romans back and they were committed, eager to join his fight. His distraction gave a Roman a chance. A gladius stabbed forwards, the blow blunted by Cruithne’s mail coat. He turned, swinging at the man, his heavy sword crashing onto the soldier’s shield but then another Roman was behind him, and another was to his right. The blows were landing and his mail coat did not cover all his body. Cruithne was wounded in several places on his arms and legs. Bleeding, roaring defiance, he killed two more Romans, the bodies piling up around him. Then an arrow caught him in the neck and he swayed. He made one more desperate lunge, which plunged his sword deep into the thigh of a Roman, then he fell to his knees.

Shouted commands sent the ends of the long Roman line wheeling round the other Pritani warriors who were quickly surrounded. The fighting was brutal and savage but over all too quickly. With Cruithne’s fall, the Romans regained their composure and their superior numbers soon told. Castatin saw a Roman who was wearing a long red cloak. The man was pointing and shouting commands as he re-ordered the lines of soldiers. After what seemed only a few moments, there were no Pritani left standing. Castatin heard himself softly calling Cruithne’s name as tears rolled down his cheeks.

The three soldiers with him shoved him and Barabal forwards, heading for the shoreline before turning back towards the Roman ships. They were dragged into the shallows and hoisted up onto the deck of one of the galleys, where they were ordered to sit while more soldiers stood watch over them. There was a lot of talking but Castatin could understand none of it. He nudged Barabal. “Are you all right?”
What a stupid question
, he thought.

She did not look at him. Her eyes just gazed blankly at the wooden deck of the galley. “They killed her because she tried to fight them,” she whispered. “I didn’t want that to happen to me so I didn’t fight them.” Her words came through more tears. He put his arm around her shoulders but she shrugged it off. “Don’t touch me!”

Castatin sat on the wooden deck, not knowing what to do. The thought that haunted him was that Seasaidh would still be alive and he and Barabal would be safe if he had not decided to run along the shore towards the village. If they had run inland they would have escaped harm altogether. But he had made the wrong choice. Seasaidh was dead because of him and now he and Barabal were destined for a life of slavery. It was all his fault.

Appius Flaminius Philo was annoyed. The attack on the village had not gone well at all. The villagers had fled to the tower on the top of the hill, allowed time to escape by the fanatical giant who had opposed his men single-handed. He had sent some marines up the hill to scout out the chances of storming the place but he knew before they returned that it would be pointless trying to take a fortified tower without some siege weapons. His men confirmed that there were more warriors up there and that the tower also had a high wooden stockade round it. He posted some sentries to watch for another attack then turned to concentrate on the village. The pickings were slim. They found some supplies of grain, some salted meat and fish, and they caught a few goats and pigs, which were taken back on board the galleys. They had slaughtered a mule and two dogs because they were no good for eating. They had also caught two slaves, a boy and a teenage girl. He was certain his men had raped the girl, which was against orders, but he did not want to punish his men any more after the day they had suffered so he pretended not to know what they had done. Two slaves was a poor return, though.

He had lost five men dead and another seven wounded, two of them badly. That one solitary madman had accounted for six of the casualties on his own. Philo would not have believed it if he had not seen it himself. Romans were used to victories on land. Centuries before, he knew, Rome had lost thousands of men and hundreds of ships in their wars against their great rival city, Carthage, the world’s great naval power whose ships controlled the sea that the Romans now called
Mare Nostrum
, Our Sea. Time and again the superior seamanship of the Carthaginians had outwitted and outfought the Roman navy, even when the Romans had overwhelming numbers on their side. So
Rome
, a land power, had turned the naval battles into land battles by fitting their ships with huge wooden ramps, which they raised vertically on their decks. It made the Roman ships unstable and unwieldy but when a Carthaginian ship came close, they would swivel the ramp, releasing the ropes holding it in place. The ramp would crash down onto the deck of the enemy ship, a huge iron spike on its underside driving into the wooden decking to hold it firmly in place. The Romans would storm across the ready-made bridge, fighting as if they were on land. The
corvus
, they called it; the Crow. It turned the tide of the war, which was won by the soldiers of
Rome
, not the sailors. Romans rarely lost battles on land but now one giant warrior had almost turned that on its head. Philo knew the chances of the tower holding another man of that sort were low but he recognised that his men were shaken by the experience so it was time to pull out.

He rattled out orders. Every house was set alight. The half-built boat on the shore was burned, too. Then the animals they could catch easily were driven aboard ship. The dead and wounded Romans were carried on board while Philo, watching his men destroy the village, began mentally composing his report. Sixteen enemy warriors killed in a tough battle for the loss of only five dead; many houses destroyed, grain and livestock captured, along with two slaves. And a boat destroyed. It didn’t sound too bad when you put it that way, he thought, though in his heart he already considered the raid a failure.

Satisfied that they had done all they could, he climbed the wooden ramp onto his galley. Men in the water heaved the ships back out to sea. They struggled because the tide was going out, leaving the ships in much shallower water than when they had landed. They were heavier with booty too, but they edged slowly free, backed oars, and were soon heading south again, leaving the village to burn. Philo congratulated himself on his choice of landing spot because he saw that his earlier suspicions had been correct; if he had aimed for the softer landfall of the sandy beach, the receding tide would have left his galleys high and dry. Where they had landed the river was more in sway than the sea, so the tidal effect was less. Just a short distance eastwards, the difference between high and low tide was far more significant. He could already see the rocks and sand shoals which would have trapped him. He was pleased and relieved that he had had the experience to make the right call. The
Mediterranean Sea
had no tides to speak of, with barely two feet of a difference between high and low tides. Many an inexperienced Roman had been caught out when coming to these northern waters by the great distances the sea would retreat from the land.

Feeling more pleased than he had a short time before, Philo glanced at the two slaves. The girl was quite pretty and had a decent figure but her face was blotched by her tears. The boy was a couple of years younger but looked quite alert. He might be intelligent enough to make a decent slave for someone, Philo thought. A look back at the burning village showed him that a group of spearmen had come down the hill to watch the Roman galleys depart. He ordered the two captives to be lifted to their feet so that the barbarians could see that some of their people had been taken. Then, because they were only slaves, he ordered them to be taken below and put in chains.

A.D. 210

Lutrin was an ambitious man. The youngest of four of the eight children his mother had borne who survived infancy, he had grown up on a farm some three days’ walk north east of Broch Tava, near the coast overlooking a wide tidal bay. Life had been hard and Lutrin had always been hungry. Being the youngest, he felt he was constantly overlooked and though his two older brothers and his sister always complained that he was the one who was spoiled by their mother, Lutrin felt they were forever picking on him. As he grew older, he learned how to manipulate his parents to cause dissension between his brothers and sister. By watching carefully, biding his time and seizing opportunities when they arose, he was often able to steal scraps of food or even small trinkets, which he would hide away. Sometimes not even he knew why he had taken them except that they belonged to someone else and he wanted them for himself. Taking things was easier than working for them.

When he was eleven years old, his eldest brother marched away to join the great raid that Nechtan was leading against the Romans. Lutrin had no idea who the Romans were, nor why his brother was leaving to fight them. In fact he had only the vaguest idea who Nechtan was, but with one of his brothers gone it meant he had to do a greater share of the work around the farm, so he was not happy. Nechtan, he decided, was his enemy, taking his brother away and causing hardship for him.

His brother never returned.

By the time Lutrin was thirteen, his sister was married and living on another farm several miles away, resulting in even more work for Lutrin. Five years later his mother died, which meant he was left to work the farm alongside his ageing father and his one remaining brother. This was not the life Lutrin wanted. He thought his father and brother were dull, stupid men who had no ambitions beyond surviving the next winter. Lutrin wanted more. Above all, he wanted things without having to work all the hours of the day to get them.

Then one day, in his nineteenth year, some warriors arrived, riding on sturdy war ponies, telling Lutrin’s father about Colm of Broch Tava, a mighty warrior who was turning the tiny village into a power to be reckoned with, a rival even to Nechtan. The men demanded tribute to help pay for the protection Colm would give him. When Lutrin’s father wanted to know who he needed protection from, one of the warriors leaned down in his saddle, giving him a grin full of menace. “Us,” he said meaningfully.

Lutrin’s father had little enough to give but he handed over some grain and some salted meat. The warriors seemed satisfied and rode off. Lutrin thought his father a coward and told him so. He expected an argument but the old man just closed his eyes and sighed. The next morning, Lutrin left home, taking as many of the few valuables his father possessed as he could carry. He headed for Broch Tava.