The War at the Edge of the World (42 page)

A groan and crash of timbers from below the wall: the gate was open, and the red and white shields of VIII Augusta were pressing up through the stone passageway in testudo formation. ‘
Constantius Victor!
’ shouted the men inside the gateway, ‘
Constantius Victor!
’ And the troops surging in from the lower fort echoed it.

Castus shoved the body of the Pictish chief away from him. When he glanced over the palisade he saw troops spreading out across the enclosure of the lower fort, most of the huts down there burning and fugitives running between them. Already the bonds of discipline were slipping; Castus saw soldiers breaking their ranks, pursuing the screaming women, looting the huts even as flames boiled from the thatch above them. There was a smell like roasting pork, and his mouth flooded with saliva for a moment – then he saw the corpses burning in the animal pens, and his guts clenched and he spat.

He clambered down off the rampart walk, unlacing his helmet and dragging it off. His scalp and face were running with blood, and his body was aching, wounds starting to pulse pain. The upper fort was a maze of reeling shadows, running men and panicked animals.

‘Modestus,’ he called, seeing the optio jogging towards him, ‘gather the men and get over to those huts at the far end. Flush out anyone you find.’

Modestus saluted quickly, and then cried out to the men of the Sixth still gathered around the gateway. The last Pictish defenders had been driven back now, and the troops coming up from the lower fort had herded them against the south-eastern rampart and had them surrounded.
Not my fight
, Castus thought. He waited until Modestus and his men had moved off, then he started across the compound towards the larger group of huts to his right. He realised he had dropped his helmet. No shield either, just the sword blunted and bloody in his grip.

As he approached the first of the larger huts, two soldiers reeled past him, and he heard a woman scream from the animal pens to his right. Fire flared beyond the parapet, blinding him for a moment, and he tripped over a body lying in the darkness. Down onto his knees, sprawling, from the corner of his eye he saw the figure of a man lunging at him from the hut doorway. He dropped and rolled. A blade bit the turf behind him.

‘Sorry, centurion,’ Placidus said. ‘Thought you were a Pict. Nothing in that hut anyway – only some dead.’

Castus got to his feet. ‘Get back over to the gate,’ he said.

Placidus was circling away from him, sword in hand. Castus saw him smile and shake his head. ‘I was ordered to keep an eye on you,’ he said. ‘Make sure everything goes as planned.’

Castus flexed his empty left hand. He raised the sword in his right, blade levelled. ‘If you think you can kill me,’ he said, ‘come on and try it.’

The big Gaul drew up his lip in a snarl, and his face was vicious in the flickering firelight. He swung his sword up, but his arm was shaking.

‘Coward,’ Castus told him. ‘You’d only attack me if my back was turned.’

Placidus let his sword drop, already edging away. ‘We can settle this later,’ he said, and gave a strained laugh. ‘I want to get that barbarian bitch’s head first!’

He turned and jogged towards the next hut. Cursing, Castus went after him. He was limping now, and Placidus was already at the hut door before Castus could catch up with him. The soldier took a step back, and kicked. Wood cracked; the door burst open.

A flung spear darted from the low opening and spitted Placidus through the throat.

For a moment the man stood with the spear through his neck. He made a wet coughing sound, and his knees buckled. He dropped heavily.

Castus limped towards the open doorway. A Pictish shield was lying on the ground, and he stooped and picked it up, holding it before him. Time slowed, the noise of the rout behind him fading in his ears. Carefully he stepped across Placidus’s quivering corpse. Then he threw himself forward through the door of the hut.

The interior smelled of burning pitch and fresh blood. Two dead warriors on the floor, two flaming torches in the firepit. At the far side, half in shadow, Cunomagla stood with a heavy boar-spear raised to strike. Castus stepped to one side and got his back against the doorframe, the Pictish shield held up before him. Cunomagla’s face hardened as she recognised him.

‘You come back,’ she said. ‘Your gods are kind to you.’

Castus saw the boy, her son, clasped behind her. He watched the head of the spear, watched the woman’s eyes.

‘These your guards?’ he said, motioning with his sword towards the dead men beside the firepit. Cunomagla did not shift her gaze.

‘Drustagnus’s men,’ she said, gripping the spear firmly. ‘He sent them to kill us, when he knew the fort would fall. But I was stronger than they.’

He could close with her in three strides, across the firepit and in under the reach of her spear. Castus tried to judge the angle, tried to guess his chances of catching the spear blow on the small shield he was carrying. But, yes, he thought, she was strong. And he was weakened by wounds, exhausted from the fight. Then there was the boy – even if he had only a knife, he could still be dangerous.

‘You planned all this?’ he said. ‘The war. It was… your intention?’

Cunomagla smiled coldly, shaking her head. Her hair was dark bronze in the flickering light of the torches. ‘No. I found out what happened after Drustagnus and your renegade murdered my husband, but then it was too late. So, I must follow fate’s direction. Sometimes the gods sleep, and men make mistakes. When they wake we are punished.’

From the smoky compound outside Castus could hear his men calling to one another. Modestus’s voice. They were getting closer.

‘But now my son will be king,’ Cunomagla said, and her arm tightened as she gripped the spear.

‘If he lives.’

Three strides, Castus thought. Block the spear and charge into her, knock her down. He willed his body to move, but could not.

‘Put down the weapon,’ he said.

‘You want to take me alive? Make a trophy of me, for your emperor? No.’ The boy peered out from behind her, wide-eyed but defiant. ‘So what will you do?’ she asked. ‘Kill me?’

‘Once my men get here, I’ll have to. Those are my orders.’

‘And you Romans always follow your
orders
, yes?’

Castus heard a thud from above him: a burning torch tossed onto the thatch. Smoke was filling the interior of the hut.

‘I gave you a knife once,’ Cunomagla said.

‘You did that.’

He took three breaths, trying not to cough. Her eyes held him, the spearhead unwavering. Then he lowered the shield and rolled his shoulder against the doorframe. As he ducked his head through the doorway he was tensing, expecting the bite of the iron spear in his spine. Out through the door, he stood up and stepped across Placidus’s body. Three paces, then four. He tried to ease his shoulders out of their hunch.

‘Nothing in there,’ he called to Modestus. ‘Move up to the next huts. Go!’

Diogenes came up beside him, with two canteens swinging from his shoulder. Castus took one of them and drank deeply, gulping the water down; then he poured the canteen over his head and washed the blood from his scalp and face. When he looked back towards the hut, the thatch was burning. No movement from inside.

‘It’s like the inferno of the Christians!’ Diogenes said. Smoke all around them, fires and contorted bodies in the shadows. Castus nodded, washing the gore from his sword. He wiped the blade on the hem of his tunic and rammed it back into the scabbard. Pacing heavily, he crossed the compound. He felt nothing now, just a spreading numbness. No sense of time or place. But he realised the fear that had been eating away at him for months now: the thought that Cunomagla might have had a child by him. She had not. He was glad of that at least.

After a while he heard the shouts from the lower fort, and gazed into the reeling smoke.
Cavalry, they’ve got cavalry!

Noise of neighing horses, beating hooves. Castus jerked into motion, snatching up a fallen javelin as he ran. The upper fort was clear now, but when he reached the ramparts he saw wild motion from the enclosure below. He ran along the wall and found a place where the palisades had been torn down.

Ponies were charging between the burning huts, released from some corral or pen at the far end of the lower fort. The soldiers who had scattered in terror were regrouping now, pulling back from the huts, readying spears. Then, as Castus stood on the wall with the javelin raised, he saw a figure ride out into the cleared space before the lower rampart. It was Cunomagla, riding bareback with her son seated in front her, brandishing the heavy spear over her head. He saw her strike down a fleeing soldier, and then drag back on the reins to turn the pony before the rampart.

‘Throw!’ somebody shouted. ‘Kill her!’

Soldiers were closing in from all sides, shields up. In the ring of men Cunomagla turned the pony again, but there was no way out. For a moment she glanced up and saw Castus standing on the wall above her with his javelin aimed. She raised her spear in salute, and he saw her grinning in wild triumph.

Then she hauled on the reins again, kicking at the pony’s flanks and charging it at the rampart. The palisades were gone, burned or broken, and beyond was only empty blackness. With a leap the pony was up onto the wall, Cunomagla turning to scream back at the soldiers; then she kicked again and the animal bolted forward, across the ruined palisade into the black gulf beyond.

For a heartbeat Castus saw her in the glow of the fires, her hair bright against the darkness. Then she fell and was gone. The soldiers surged after her, dashing up into the breach and pelting spears and javelins down into the night.

‘Why didn’t you throw?’ The same voice. Castus turned on his heel. Three paces away, the notary Nigrinus stood on the brink of the wall. He must have entered the fort with the first wave from the gates. Castus tightened his grip on the javelin, still holding it raised above his head, and for a moment the notary stared back at him, face blank with surprise. Then Castus eased his arm down, until the javelin head clinked on the stones of the wall.

Nigrinus smiled, raising an eyebrow. ‘I think you missed your moment, centurion,’ he said. Castus heard the crackle of the burning huts once more, the shouts and screams. He stepped down off the wall, and Nigrinus followed him.

‘Well, she won’t get very far,’ the notary said, apparently quite calm now. ‘If the fall didn’t kill her, our troops outside the fort soon will. No matter… Did you find the other chief? Drustagnus?’

‘I found him and I killed him,’ Castus said without looking back.

‘You did? Excellent! I’ll mention it to my superiors and see you’re rewarded.’ Nigrinus was pacing close beside him. ‘The slaughter here has been quite satisfactory. There’s little chance these people will dare raise their heads against us again. I think,’ he said, turning to address Castus directly, ‘we might consider your debt paid in full. You have a rare talent for survival, it appears. But I’m sure if we never encounter each other again, we will both be pleased.’

‘May the gods send us luck, then.’

‘Now, tell me,’ the notary said with sudden urgency, ‘which of these huts was the home of the renegade, Decentius?’

Castus shrugged, scanning the fort enclosure. Away to his left, he saw the hut in which he had been held captive.

‘That one.’

Nigrinus nodded and strode off without another word. Castus watched him go, until a swirl of smoke blotted the man out.

The notary would not find what he was looking for: the fire was spreading between the huts, and he would not have the chance to search more than one. Whatever compromising documents, whatever evidence of complicity the renegade might have left behind him would soon be lost to the flames. They were all the same, Castus thought. Nigrinus and Decentius, Drustagnus and Cunomagla. Even the emperor himself. All of them with their plans and schemes, all of them groping about in the shadowy mazes of conspiracy. If some lost and others won, what did it matter? It was the soldiers who paid in blood, the soldiers and the warriors, the civilians struck down and butchered in their thousands, the burnt homes and crops, the despoiled land.

The gods help us, Castus thought to himself. He could feel a strange punchy feeling rising from his chest, a quivering of nervous energy. Everything suddenly seemed absurd, hilarious. He threw back his head and laughed – laughed out loud until his eyes streamed. Pacing back towards the gateway, he was gulping air as the laughter heaved out of him.

The emperor had got what he wanted at least: a victorious war, far from the controlling influence of his imperial colleagues. And an army, welded to his cause by battle. To the cause of his son too.

And it was glorious, Castus told himself as he gasped for breath. This was what glory truly looked like: the corpses stacked in heaps, the fire and the slaughter. But he had survived. He had triumphed. The thought of that started him laughing again.

Over by the gateway the dead were lying thick. Castus saw one of them sprawled across his path, hardly more than a boy, fourteen or fifteen, with a sword still locked in his grip. He stepped across the body, waving to Valens and the others by the gate.

‘Centurion…’ Diogenes said, and then his eyes widened in sudden shock.

Castus jolted back into awareness, glancing around. He saw Valens take two running steps towards him, raising his sword.

‘What…?’ he said, startled. ‘No…
You?
’

Then something hard and very heavy struck the back of his head and his legs were gone from beneath him. He was on the ground, hot blood gushing over his face. Shouts of rage, a scream.

‘Little bastard was playing dead!’

Valens was standing over him. Castus tried to heave himself up, but the blood was pouring onto the ground beneath him.

‘Well, he’s dead for sure now…’ he heard Valens say.

He opened his mouth, and it filled with blood. Then the tide of pain rushed over him, and he was lost beneath it.

‘So, it looks like you’re alive after all then.’