Island of Ghosts (11 page)

“I never realized what ‘armored cavalry’ meant until today!” he exclaimed enthusiastically. “By Andate! You hardly look human in all that gear. I’m not surprised that no one’s ever beaten you on a field where you could use the horses.”

Arshak smiled and rubbed the hilt of his sword. “We are the best cavalry in the world,” he said complacently. He and Gatalas were still wearing their armor. I’d taken mine off, and told one of my bodyguard to see to it when he’d finished oiling his own.

“How strong is that armor?” asked Severus. “Is it as good as plate?”

In answer, Gatalas held out his arm in front of Severus; the tribune tapped it, then fingered the scales, and the other two picked themselves up to examine it as well. “Two layers deep?” they asked. “What about the men who have horn for the scales, instead of iron? How does that compare?” “How long does it last?” “How long does it take to make?” “Will it turn a sword?” Gatalas and Arshak smiled, preening themselves, and boasted of their armor’s strength.

I watched them irritably. “A direct blow from a good sword will cut through it,” I said, and at once regretted it. They all looked at my leg. I was sitting with the bad knee up in front of me because it still hurt to cross it.

“The man that hit your leg was Dacian, yes?” said Gatalas. We were speaking Latin, and he was less fluent than Arshak or myself. “He used one of the long swords with two hands.”

Arshak’s eyes glittered. He lifted his own two hands above his head, and brought an imaginary sword down on my leg, whack, whack, whack. I’d been warned by his eyes, and managed not to flinch. The gesture was not one of serious malice—but he wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t been annoyed at my admission that the armor was not impenetrable. “It was almost an axe,” Arshak said, abandoning his imaginary sword again. “And even so, Ariantes, without your armor, you would have lost your leg. A man in this armor is almost impossible to wound.”

I remembered lying in the mud with the Dacian hacking at me. Arshak still believed in his invulnerability. That is the problem with armored cavalry; that had been the problem for all our people. If we’d believed we could lose a war with the Romans, we never would have started one. “A long spear, used as a pike or a lance, can go through it, too,” I said, stubbornly. “And a catapult bolt. And an arrow from a Hunnish bow.”

“But it’s very good armor,” Severus said, tactfully closing the subject. “I suppose, though, that you need a big horse to carry it all.”

So we talked horses for a bit—the Romans were immensely impressed by the Parthian horses in particular—and then got onto hunting, and thus to shooting, and bows, and lances, and war. I said very little; my leg ached and I was tired. We ate the roast ox, and the carrots and leeks that had been used for stuffing the meat, and drank some more wine. The rain hissed in the fire.

“The thing that amazes me,” said Comittus, as we started on the nuts and apples, “is how much the way your troops are organized resembles the way ours are.”

“Like a legion?” asked Arshak, expressionlessly. He was sneering at Comittus, though the other man didn’t realize it. A Sarmatian dragon has almost nothing in common with a Roman legion.

“No, no, like an
ala
of auxiliary cavalry,” replied Comittus, again showing himself less foolish than he first appeared. “Your ‘dragons’ have five hundred men; our quingenary
alae
have five hundred men. You divide the men into squadrons of thirty; we divide them into
turmae
of thirty. You have squadron captains, we have decurions. It’s exactly the same. Did you copy us or did we copy you?”

“I’ll bet we both copied the Parthians,” said Severus. “They use heavy cavalry arranged in ‘dragons,’ too. I read about it in a book. And the Sarmatians used to live in the East, near Parthia.”

“In the days of Queen Tirgatao,” said Arshak, “we fought both the Parthians and the Romans, or so the songs say.”

I looked away. I did not like to hear my wife’s name spoken, even when the person meant was the queen she’d been named after.

“What happened?” asked Comittus, with interest.

“She led her people to victory, and died winning it.”

“Do even your women fight wars?” asked Severus.

“Not now,” Arshak answered. “But in the days of our grandfathers’ grandmothers, yes. There are many songs of the warrior queens. In those days a woman could not marry unless she had killed an enemy of her tribe.” He shrugged. “It was easier for her to do it then, I think. People used less armor. Most women can ride and shoot with the bow, and I think that in those days that was all that was needed.”

“Queens have led armies in Britain, too,” said Comittus. “Cartimandua of the Brigantes, Boudica of the Iceni . . .”

“Bodica?” I said, beginning to pay attention again. “Like the legate’s wife?”

“Yes,” said Comittus, beaming at me. “And in fact, Aurelia Bodica is related to Queen Boudica, on her mother’s side, through the royal family of the Coritani. The sister of King Prasutagus of the Iceni married—”

The third tribune, Gaius Valerius Victor, sniggered. He was older than Comittus, but he’d been hitting the wine harder, and was now slightly drunk. “Hear our
Brittunculus
on the royalty of the tribes! Sitting around a campfire’s gone to your head, Comittus: you’re raving in the poetry of your ancestors.”

Comittus went red.
Brittunculus
: little Briton, a diminutive that oozed contempt. “You’ve got no right to use that word to me, Gaius,” he said. “You’re British yourself; your family’s lived in Verulamium for generations.”

“Yes, but
my
great-great-grandfather was a veteran of the army of the deified Claudius, not a Coritanic tribesman who used to paint himself blue!”

“My ancestors were kings!” replied Comittus, starting up.

“That’s enough!” rapped Severus, glaring at both of them, and both fell silent and remembered us. We were all looking at them with blank, remote expressions and expecting the two to duel. No Sarmatian would have spoken so insultingly to another man’s face unless he meant to fight him—and no Sarmatian accepted an insult to his ancestors peaceably. The fire hissed and spluttered as the silence dragged. Comittus reclined again, blinking angrily, and we realized that nothing was going to happen.

“You are a descendant of kings?” asked Arshak, to break the stillness. “And this lady also, the wife of my lord the legate?”

“Well—Aurelia Bodica is,” Comittus said, still unhappy. “Her father is a descendant of the kings of the Regni, and her mother, of the Coritani. My family are related to her mother’s. You probably noticed I have a British name.”

We had not noticed, of course, and I wasn’t even sure which of his names was the British one, except that it couldn’t be Lucius.

“These . . . Coritani, Regni, Iceni . . . they are tribes?” asked Arshak.

“Native British tribes,” supplied Severus. “Britain used to be divided into a number of different tribal kingdoms. A few tribal organizations are still used for administrative purposes, but otherwise none of them count for much.”

“We also have tribes,” said Arshak, “but I think ours are greater. We Iazyges hold all the land between the Danube and Tisza beneath our spears, and we count for much even with your emperor. We are all Iazyges here—except Ariantes’ Roxalani. And it is because you share family with this lady, Lucius Javolenus, that you come to be a tribune?”

“Well—yes.”

Victor was scowling again, and Severus looked uneasy. There was something about this topic that bothered them—presumably the same thing that had caused the squabble a moment before, and not the fact that Comittus had won his place through patronage, as the Romans take that for granted. I tested it, cautiously. “The lady Aurelia Bodica seemed to me very wise and perceptive,” I said.

I’d hit it. There was something about the legate’s lady that the other two tribunes disliked: they looked at me nervously. Comittus, however, beamed at me again. “She is, she is!” he exclaimed. “There’s not a woman in Britain to match her. Julius Priscus fell for her head over heels the moment he met her, and he’d tell you himself what an immense help she’s been to him, lucky man. You know, of course, that the legionary legate for Eburacum controls the civil administration of northern Britain as well as all its military affairs—” (we hadn’t) “well, Aurelia Bodica can sort out a lawsuit so quickly it makes you blink.”

“Yes,” said Severus, hurriedly—then, turning to Arshak, he said, “You are also descended from kings, aren’t you, Lord Arsacus?”

“My father is second in line to the crown,” replied Arshak proudly, which effectively silenced everyone else’s boasts about noble birth.

I
 LAY  AWAKE
  for a while that night, trying to interpret what I’d heard. I had not thought about the natives of the province as a force distinct from the Romans who governed it. Victor, though, had sneered at Comittus as a Briton: there was some tension there. Aurelia Bodica was descended from two houses of native kings, and her position of influence made some of her husband’s junior officers uneasy. Who were we going to fight in the North? Facilis had expressed doubts that we would fight anyone: “What if it’s all patrols and guard duty?” he’d asked. That still meant that there was some force the Romans needed to guard against.

I had known nothing about Britain, and I was still trying to grasp how large the island was. All through the journey I’d believed that we were being sent there to prevent us from troubling the Romans, not because the Romans wanted us to deal with trouble from someone else. Priscus, though, had come to collect us with the assumption that we were something much closer to auxiliary troops, that he could appoint his own men to officer us and use us against Rome’s enemies. Facilis’ letter revealing how dangerous we could be had horrified him. From what I’d overheard in Bononia I knew that there were more Sarmatian troops to come. That did not suggest a province entirely at peace.

What were we going to do? The tribunes had said nothing whatever about that, almost certainly out of deliberate policy. Julius Priscus had carefully avoided showing us how many men he actually had in Dubris. At the tribunal he’d appeared with just the three tribunes and twenty of his dispatch riders: I guessed that Facilis had come on his own. Probably that meant the legate did not have many men with him. A handful of men from his legion, then, and fifteen hundred of us to move: he would certainly try to keep us ignorant, bewildered, and unsure of our directions, dependent upon himself and his officers not just for guidance but for the means of life. We had been given our weapons back—a thing I suspected the legate now regretted—but we were not Roman soldiers yet by any means. We were barbarians, and would be kept ignorant of everything we had no immediate need to know.

I could imagine the Romans busily writing letters at the naval base. Planning where we would go, how we would journey there, what we would eat on the way; alerting other troops to our movements in case there was trouble. I had no desire whatever to take advantage of the lack of guards, but I wanted some control over what was to be done with my friends, my followers, and myself.

T
HE  FOLLOWING  DAY
,  when I’d checked that the wagons and horses were ready for the journey to Eburacum and that we were well provisioned, I took my horse, shooed off my bodyguard, and set out into the town looking for Lucius Javolenus Comittus.

I found him at his quarters in the naval base—a couple of small rooms at the end of one of the barracks blocks. He appeared himself at my knock, looking tousled, bad-tempered, and, when he saw me, surprised.

“Oh!” he said. “Lord Ariantes. Uh . . . I was just planning the itinerary for our troop.”

“That is what I have come about,” I replied. “May I speak with you, Lucius Javolenus?”

“Uh . . . yes, yes, of course! Come in out of the rain.”

I unsaddled and tethered my horse, and limped in. The room was stone and narrow; I disliked the cold, enclosed feel of it intensely. Comittus had moved a desk underneath the window, to get the light, and it was littered with parchment, tablets, and sheets of wood.

“Thank you for the dinner last night,” said Comittus.

“It was our pleasure. I have come, Lucius Javolenus, because I thought perhaps I could be of help. When my lord the procurator Natalis was trying to gather supplies for us, he allowed me to check his lists, and I found that he had much misjudged what was needed. He ordered wheat, and my men have complained at eating grain all the way from Aquincum. They are not used to it; it makes their teeth hurt, they say.”

“Oh!” Comittus exclaimed in alarm, and picked up one of the sets of tablets. “I’ve ordered it, too. Don’t you eat wheat at all?”

“Some, a little, to thicken a stew or make flat cakes. But in our own country we eat mostly meat—fresh and dried beef, mutton, and horsemeat—and milk and cheese from mares, sheep, and cattle. Now, I understand you do not eat horses or drink mare’s milk, but dried and salted beef is easily obtained, as is cheese. Would it be possible to replace a part of the order for wheat with orders for some of these things?”

We were soon going over what supplies would be collected where. Comittus made some effort to cloud the itinerary, and referred to “supply depot one, supply depot two,” and so on, but I gathered we would reach the provincial capital, Londinium, on the third day of the journey, pick up more supplies four days later somewhere to the north, and two days later again would be at a place called Lindum, which was Comittus’ home: Eburacum was three days’ ride north of that. “And there we will stop?” I asked.

“Well, not us,” he replied, “That is, we’ll stop briefly, but . . . I wasn’t supposed to tell you this.”

“Why is it secret? Are we not meant to know that the three dragons will be split up?”

“Deae Matres! How did you know that?”

I was honestly surprised. “We have been sure from the beginning that we would be posted to different camps as soon as we arrived at our destination. All along you have feared to have too many of us together. When we left Aquincum there was some question whether our group was not too large to be safely contained on the journey.”