Arthur Imperator (14 page)

XX
VIII Javelin

That
day, the hunting had been good. The beagle pack had worked with the big hounds and had scented, tracked and brought to bay a scarred old tusker of a wild boar. He had made his defiant stand in a thicket of brambles, but the canny dogs had wormed in after him and he burst out with Axis grimly hanging onto one ear, Javelin on the other, a shaggy yellow Agassian hound called Aurum ripping at his gut and a couple of game little beagles biting furiously at his hooves. The infuriated pig turned to shake one dog from his ear, and Aurum was ripping into his belly. When he turned his attention to Aurum, Axis had his great fangs tearing into the pig’s throat. I stepped forward with my heavy ash-hafted boar spear to stick the beast, but my mutilated foot slowed me, and one of my house carls was quicker. 

His
blade was into the boar’s wide chest as the beast lunged forward, its impetus driving the iron deeper. The man tried to lift the pig like a hay bale on a fork, but the weight was too much and he skidded to one knee. I skipped sideways as nimbly as I could and drove for the beast’s ribs but another houseman was again quicker and his blade hit the pig in the throat, stopping it before it could reach the grounded man. Finally, I put my blade in under the ribs, into the beast’s fighting heart, saying a prayer to Mithras as I did. The thrust was all that was needed. The furious beast was dying, slumping sideways. The dogs, bloodied from shoulder to paws, were mauling at the expiring boar and we let them have their reward for a few moments before calling them off.

My
blood-spattered house carls, panting and grinning, slapped each other and me on the back and we laughed like boys and boasted noisily about what a feast we’d have that night. And we did. We ate and caroused in the domed Roman hall in Chester that had been a council chamber, a splendid edifice unlike any other. Ingenious engineers had created it by rotating several arches to support a roof made from concrete that was lighter than any stone. It intrigued me, and I called on a military bridge builder to explain how it could be.

The
fellow said the Romans had invented a liquid rock from a mix of rubble, lime, volcanic ash and sand. They mixed it with water and poured it into wooden moulds. To make the dome, the old Romans had constructed scaffolding and moulds, packed the mix into it then poured in water. Because concrete is much lighter than stone, it could be supported on the stone walls and pillars below, where stone would have been too heavy. Its ability to be shaped also was an advantage, allowing concrete to be made into the dome shape that creates such spacious, airy chambers. 

What
the engineer told me next made my military mind buzz. This concrete would set underwater, and when seawater came into contact with the mix it triggered a hot chemical reaction that set the whole mixture quickly. I wondered about an application to make bridge piers that might allow us to cross unfordable rivers without the enemy’s knowledge. It was an idea that could be extremely useful one day…

I
came back to the present when Guinevia tugged at my sleeve. “The floor is warm,” she hissed. “I think the building is on fire!” I smiled. My widely-read Druid had never been in the hall before and knew nothing of the hypocaust that provided piped heating under our feet and through the wall tiles. I explained it, and though she looked at me doubtfully, I later noticed with pleasure that she had slipped off her sandals and was warming her feet on the flagged floor. When I teased her, she blushed. “My father’s hall was regarded as very fine,” she said. “It had a wood-planked floor over a wide pit that was filled with straw to keep it insulated in the winter, but it was chilly. The walls were just wood reinforced with wattles and mud. There was a fire in the middle, but it was cold around the edges of the hall, and it was always smoky because the smoke’s only way out was through a vent in the roof.”

It
was a splendid evening, Guinevia seemed to be recovering and, though pale, was smiling and gracious and listened attentively to the musicians who accompanied several bards in a musical story-telling contest. I had no ear for the music provided by a couple of reed flutes and a lyre, though I enjoy the sound of drums and trumpets, but the bards’ stories were wisely-chosen epics of battle and hunting, of monsters slain and sea voyages taken. I enjoyed them, though I noticed Guinevia sometimes yawning surreptitiously.

It was a rare evening of relaxation. The wild boar meat was good, we had hare and pheasant, root vegetables, fruit, soft cheese, mead and some thin red wine from Gaul. I was a tired and satisfied Imperator that night, when I unpinned my silver and amber badge of British office and slipped onto our sleeping pallet beside my returned queen.

However,
before I could sleep there began one of the worst hours of my life. Guinevia’s maid, who acted as nurse to little Milo, rushed into the room, screaming and hysterical. In her arms was my son, limp and covered in blood. The nurse was shouting: “The dogs! The dogs attacked him!” 

I
was on my feet, grabbing for my scabbarded sword Exalter where it hung, racing for the door, throwing aside the sheath and belt and bursting into the child’s chamber. Both my hounds were in there. Axis was in the far corner, in the shadows, panting hard. Javelin was lying near the door, his broad chest sheeted in blood, his jaws open, gasping, and dripping gore. He looked up at me and thumped his tail feebly, but did not rise to his feet. I looked at his golden brown eyes, and he gazed up at me, remaining still, and unusually not rising. The blood was puddled around his great paws and I said: “You treacherous killer! Why? Why did you attack my son?” He was looking at me with what flashed through my mind was reproach, but I was committed to the swing. “Why did you?” I said. They were the last words he ever heard, and I hacked down hard at my hound’s neck.

May
the gods forgive me, but at least he died painlessly, silently. Axis, curiously motionless in his dark corner, growled and I turned to kill him, my other hound, then Guinevia was at me, grasping my arm, tugging at me. “Milo is unhurt! He’s not injured!” she was screaming. Behind her I heard the thuds and clatter as guards came running. I turned, stupid with rage and fear at what she might say. “What?” was all I could say. 

“Milo
is fine. It is not his blood.” I still did not comprehend. A movement from Axis caught my attention, and he groaned and slid to the floor. A guard was entering with an oil lamp and in its light I saw that my big dog was lying on his side now, blood puddling under him, too.

I
stepped forward and caught a gleam in the shadows to my left. Teeth. I moved towards it, the lamplight moved and I saw a large, humped shadow in its own pool of blood. “Lights!” I shouted, and two or three lamps were raised as the room began to fill with people. I moved towards the gleam of teeth, Exalter readied to strike. Then I saw what I had done.

The
motionless, shadowy hump was a dead wolf, its throat torn out. I swivelled to see Axis. He raised his head and thumped his tail weakly against the floor. The flesh of his ribs was torn open, I could see the white gleam of bone. I went to my knees beside him, hearing a scrape and thump as a guard ran a spear into the dead wolf’s carcass. Axis licked my hand and seemed to sigh. The odd angle at which his forepaw rested showed me that it was broken. His pelt was hideously torn open, he was bleeding profusely.

“Get
a medic here!” I shouted and glared around me. “Get a medic, now!” I tried to raise my big hound, but he groaned, so I eased him back down. Guinevia, weeping, was kneeling beside me.

“The
dogs saved Milo,” she said simply. I moaned aloud and left her petting my black hound’s lacerated head. I stumbled as I picked up Javelin’s body from the floor, his noble head lolling, near-separated by my killing sword. For the first time since I was a boy, I wept hot tears. 

My
faithful dog had given his life to save my child from a predator wolf, and I had rewarded him with death. The medic rushed into the room, scared-looking and tousled from sleep. “Save that dog,” I sad harshly, pointing to Axis. “If he dies, it’s your back that will be torn open.” Then, tear-stained and humiliated, I stamped out of the room to compose myself.

Later,
we found scratches on Milo’s neck, marks we believed were inflicted when the wolf had seized him in his cot. From the punishing wounds on my hounds, we saw how they must have taken on the gray killer and fought him to the death. Axis had escaped with the lesser wounds, but they were still terrible. His ribs and head were lacerated, his forepaw broken, but even lamed, he must have fought on, his gallant heart refusing to give in.

Javelin
had the worst of it. His throat was torn, his pelt shredded and a rear leg was crushed by the wolf’s huge jaws, but he too must have fought courageously to allow his litter mate Axis to inflict the killing throat wound that had finished off the wolf.

“How
did we not hear the fight?” Guinevia asked. I shook my head. It could have happened while we were still in the hall, feasting, it could have been a silent, desperate battle as our dogs offered their lives in exchange for the child they guarded. It was something we would never know, and I still grieve for the faithful dog I killed in error.

We
buried Javelin just below the crest of a hill where he had played so happily as a puppy. I ordered a headstone for him, to record his tale of devotion and courage and I made sacrifice to the gods to treat him well in the hall of Valhalla. I especially asked that they give him the crusted ends of beef he loved, and to let him sleep warm by the fireside on winter’s nights.

Two
nights later, I walked alone up that hill, wept unashamedly, and placed a bone, with well-cooked beef attached, on my hound’s grave. “Go into your long sleep, my friend,” I said, and my heart tore as it never had for any human.

Axis
recovered well from his wounds, although the marks of the terrible lacerations he had sustained could be seen through his glossy fur, and his broken forepaw, which the medic had set well, slowed his speed so I would joke with him that we were a pair of cripples together. He would look up at me with his wise brown eyes when I fondled his ears or chest and I swear he forgave me. I shall have to wait until I end my life and cross the bridge of swords to see if Javelin will lick my hands in forgiveness. Somehow, I think he will. 

XXIX Eidyn

Years
before, I had served in the Roman Army, so it was natural that I ordered my own troops in the disciplines and methods of the men who were now my enemies. We trained as the legions did, we marched, made camp and fought in their time-proven victorious ways. We used their equipment and armour, practised their hygiene and dietary methods. Like the Mules of Marius, the emperor who reformed the army of Rome, my soldiers carried full packs and tools that totalled the weight of a small man, yet they could cover 40 miles’ march in a single day and were still able to dig and establish a defensible camp each night.

So
it was a familiar experience when I rode out of Eboracum at the head of a legion, headed north to put down the Picts. We tramped along the paved military highway of Dere Street in disciplined columns, obedient to the cadence of the centurions who counted the number of paces we made each day. We passed through the garrison towns of Caractonium and Corla and arrived once more at the stone frontier that was the Rampart of the Augustus Hadrian. 

This
gated wall that was once the northern extent of the vast Roman Empire was built by the Spaniard Publius Aelius Hadrianus, cousin and godson of the Emperor Trajan, more as a customs barrier than as a defence line. The Wall of square-cut stone ran from sea to sea, was three times the height of a man, and was fronted by a vee-shaped deep ditch that made it all but impassable to invaders, even if they had been able to overcome the garrisons that stood every third of a mile along its length. There was even a flat-bottomed ditch inside a double berm a short way south of the wall, to protect the garrisons from any southern attack. It was a magnificent piece of engineering, but for all its imposing splendour, the Wall that was also called the Aelian Rampart had seen only a short term of service. It was replaced after just 16 years by the more northerly turf-and-timber wall of Antoninus, which stretched from firth to firth across the waist of Pictland.

I
had seen the Antonine Wall before, finding it sadly depleted, a ditch grown so shallow a marching man need hardly break stride to cross it. It was no defensive barrier, but that was immaterial. I intended to march beyond it into the heart of the rebel territory, to take sword and fire to the pesky insurgents. They had slipped away from my forces several years before, and we had wasted much effort for little return. This time, I vowed, would be different. And it was.

Before
I crossed the Antonine, though, I had business with natives south of its crumbled barrier, so I quick-marched my legion through the land of the Votadini, surprising them before they could rally enough men to delay us, and we soon came to their craggy fortress south of the great firth. The ancient stronghold called Dun Eidyn was steep-faced volcanic rock on three sides, but the eastern approach was a sloping ramp mostly occupied by houses. We simply fired the town and as the wind was from the east, followed through the smoke and over the rudimentary wooden defences to slaughter the small force of Picts who had taken refuge there. 

With
their fortress taken, I wanted to wait for my second legion’s approach from Chester, and viewed the vast rock as a possible camp. It was unsuitable. After a dry summer, there was no significant water supply on the hilltop. I recalled a natural fortress half a day’s march east where an impressive rampart had been built on an old oppidum, or hill fort, and I had sent a small detachment to seize and hold it as an outpost to overlook the firth and the road alongside. There was a brook there, which promised a natural aquifer, and a river was nearby, which would be excellent as both defensive feature and water supply. The hill was the site of a major settlement of the Votadini called Dunpelder, so there would be farmers, traders and others with food and supplies. We moved back there, leaving a holding force in Eidyn’s destroyed burh, to wait a month or so for the rest of our forces, and especially of our cavalry, who had to come from the southern downs of Britain.

When
the first crisp mornings signalled the beginning of autumn, my two northern legions were finally together. We had a small cavalry force under my longtime tribune Cragus, we had an array of ballistae and a siege train and we even had a small naval force under Grimr the Suehan anchored in the nearby firth. Our scouts had been busy and brought news that the Pict chieftains had established their main force on another volcanic crag, north of the Antonine, where it dominated the lowest crossing of the river that fed the wide firth.

I
knew the place. On a previous expedition, we had occupied the crag, which was called Snowdoun or Stirling, and Guinevia had sacrificed a human in the old Mithraic temple there. I remembered the event clearly; a grossly fat mule trader whose guts had been spilled so Guinevia could read them for an augury. The wretch had died whimpering for his mother, but the signs were good, and Druids knew that any offering of a human soul to the gods would be regarded with great favour. Later, I’d credit that sacrifice with saving my life after I escaped execution as a captive. If that summit we’d occupied were defended with any competence, it would be a long and difficult task to take it, siege engines or no. Three centuries before, it had been so established as a strongpoint that even the Romans had bypassed it, leaving it in the hands of the local tribe, and the men from Italia had made their own fortified camp eight miles away. 

We
marched to Snowdoun, where the Picts cowered behind their vast dolerite walls. We encamped and built a long double palisade atop ramparts and ditches around the base of the towering rock to act both as containment for the besieged and a defensive wall for ourselves if we were attacked. We made a few minor attempts to storm the walls, and then resigned ourselves to a long siege.

In
theory, the besiegers should always win, but it would take time, and winter was on its inexorable approach. I did not relish the idea of winter quarters on the river plain under that towering upthrust of rock, but we went through the motions. We pulled down houses on the approach ramp for materials to use for our works and pushed great wicker baskets forward, filling them with dirt and rocks to make a protective wall against the citadel’s few archers. We located the two wells just outside the walls and filled them to deny water to the besieged. We began constructing platforms for the siege engines we had brought with us, cutting down an entire copse nearby for the timber we required.

We
had needs: we needed siege towers from which we could shoot down onto the defenders’ walls, and our engineers were busy constructing the ramps that would let us roll those great towers up close. We needed heavy-roofed galleries that we could wheel close to the walls, to protect our battering ram crews from the rocks that would be rained down at them; we needed to fill the ditch outside the wall so we could wheel our rams up to the stones through which they must smash. And above, all, we needed time, but we would not have enough before the freezing weather came, that I knew.

I
was directing the positioning of a battery of wild asses, giant whiplike ballistae that could hurl rocks or pots of blazing pitch over the walls, when Guinevia approached. She looked drawn and weary, for she had been less than her sparkling self for months, since her kidnap and rescue. She wasted no time. “Myrddin is coming,” she said quietly. “I sent for him.”

I
nodded. I knew she had somehow communicated a psychic message to her mentor wizard, just as she could send her mind to view far places. “He will make this fortress fall,” she said simply. Mentally, I raised an eyebrow. Myrddin might be a powerful wizard, but he was no military engineer. With our best efforts, fair weather and no interference, it could be weeks or months before we could breach these defences.

Guinevia
read my thoughts. “He can do it,” she said flatly.

I
shrugged. “Any help he can give will be useful,” I ventured.

The
druidess looked at me coldly, in a way she had never viewed me before. “I told you he will make this fortress fall, and I have seen it happen. It will come before the first snow.”

Sometimes,
you have to just nod agreement, which is what I did, before turning back to the more earthly considerations of throwing large river stones over the walls of the fortress. A lead missile the size of a hen’s egg flattened against the rock near where I stood, and I brought myself quickly back to the present. “Behind here,” I said, tugging Guinevia into the shelter of an earth-filled basket.

She
nodded indifferently. “Myrddin is close. He will be here in the morning.”

And
so he was. The familiar long, dark figure strode across the mud to my tent, his crystal-blue eyes sharp under his dark, shaggy brows, a hood concealing the long plait of oiled hair that was his vanity. As always, he carried with him an aura of power and authority, and as always I wondered about this son of no father whose sire was a spirit demon. “Breakfast, Arthur, breakfast,” he said by way of greeting. I called for a slave, who soon brought oat cakes, cold mutton and a flask of the thin red wine from Gaul that was the best we had. The wizard ate, then asked to look around our camp.

The
place was a maze of muddy earthworks, a jumble of construction timbers. Wooden platforms at the end of the camp closest to the heavy gates of the stronghold supported a battery of big catapults that were firing arrow-headed bolts or rounded river stones at the citadel’s iron-strapped entrance. Work parties dragged lumber, stones and parts for siege engines and towers. Archers trotted from place to place to lay down covering fire as the great baskets of soil were moved closer to the walls, and smoke and stinking fumes from the heated pitch that was being used for fire arrows and missiles drifted across the whole scene. It looked like the way the Christians described Hades, I thought gloomily. 

Myrddin
took it in interestedly. “I’d appreciate a diversion later today, just before sundown, on that side of the walls,” he said pointing to the southwestern corner of the ramparts, where a steep slope had been cleared of trees. “Keep it up until the dusk falls, if you would.” I nodded. I had expected he’d have a plan, but I was not going to question him. He could probably fly over the walls if he wanted, he was a powerful sorcerer. I touched the iron of my sword hilt for luck. Then I simply gave the orders and waited for sundown. Later, I saw Guinevia speak with the wizard, saw him pat her shoulder and stride off towards the eastern slope. I assumed he had found a way into the fortress, and when I caught a glimpse of a white rat casually slipping under the side of a tent, I knew he probably had…

The
siege continued the next morning with plenty of activity from both sides, but by dusk, the defenders were noticeably quieter. I ordered extra guards during the night, suspecting a sally while we slept, but the dawn arrived without any surprise, except that matters were unusually calm. Our ballistae continued to pound the gates, which were showing signs of splintering but little else, but our archers had no targets along the walls, and a puzzled, grizzled centurion came to me. “Summat’s up, boss,” he said. “There’s nobbut one or two on’t walls. That’s not right.” I looked up again. He’d voiced what I had half-noticed, but had been too busy with the artillery to consider. I was puzzling over the possibilities when a shout from the nearest ballista crew caught my attention. Someone had opened the small wicket that was set in the heavy oak gates.

Intuition
seized me. “Stop firing, stop!” I yelled in my biggest parade ground voice. I knew who I would see before the tall dark figure stepped out. It was Myrddin. “Go!” I shouted, gesturing ‘forward’ to the dozen or so soldiers around me. We sprinted across the rubble on the ramp in front of the gates, arriving to find the wizard calm and composed, wiping his hands on a piece of linen.

“Go
inside,” he gestured in a lordly manner. “It’s all yours now. Just don’t drink the water.”

Within
the hour, we had the whole citadel occupied. The streets were littered with dead and dying men, wax-faced and with foam on their startlingly-blue lips. A few wretches were doubled in agony, most were dead, a score or two were still alive but too weakened to fight.

“Poisoned,”
Guinevia said with a satisfaction I had never seen in her before. “Poisoned, every treacherous, traitorous man.” I never questioned Myrddin, never asked how he had done it, but the memory of those gasping, dying men haunted me for years.

Over
the next few days, we stacked the dead outside, interlayered with the timbers that had been our siege engine platforms and wooden walls and made them into a number of huge funeral pyres. I didn’t think to bury the dead, as they seemed tainted, something the earth itself would reject, so I ordered them burned. Nor did I ever want to know how Myrddin had entered the citadel. He may have spirited himself inside invisible, he may have flown over the walls on a hawk’s wings. It was a magician’s business, not mine. 

Equally,
I never asked what he had used to poison the garrison’s water supplies, but I have always had my suspicions. Privately I shuddered at the thought of those men, traitors or not, going through such a filthy death. I was not going to berate a powerful sorcerer, not ever, but this was not the way a warrior kills his enemies, I felt. 

Today,
I am not so sure. In war, things can change. You kill them with a spear, a sword, an arrow, and some may perhaps use a poison. I knew my own choice and what I would use, but I did not question that killing them had saved many of the lives under my command. Once again, I hardened my heart. Anyway, at that time I had no use for philosophy. I had to consider my next moves in the campaign. The snow would be coming, but I still had enough time to roll up the insurgents and bring those rebel chieftains to heel. And I did. I led my legions northeast, along the cordon of the old Roman forts that had been the exact line of march followed on our last punitive expedition years before.