Arthur Invictus (8 page)

Before
dusk, we were shuffling and limping through the frozen slush, hands tied, roped by our necks to the tails of the surviving Hun ponies. Our new masters, who told us they were taking us to Bononia, took every opportunity to goad us on with sword or spear point, vengeful because we had cost too many lives and we did not carry enough plunder to placate them. If Maximian had not issued specific orders about us being delivered alive, we would have been slaughtered where we stood on that snowy moor. But the emperor wanted us, wanted me at least, intact for his pleasure. I did not relish the thought. Nor did I relish returning to my former stronghold as a captive, and a doomed one at that.

Chapter XVI - Captive

Bad news travels fast. Guinevia and the tribunes Grabelius, Quirinus and Grimr soon knew that Arthur and part of his troop were imprisoned in Bononia, and had met in Dover for a council of war. Grabelius, as cavalry commander, was by Arthur’s orders acting as proconsul and was in charge of the army during the imperator’s absence. “He should never have led that expedition,” he said bitterly.

“He
had to; he had to meet the Celts and Huns face to face to persuade them into an alliance,” Guinevia pointed out gently.

“We
have to rescue him,” said Grimr. “It’s a naval operation. He’s in Bononia because it’s a port, and Maximian will want Arthur brought before him as quickly as possible. He’ll transport him by sea and maybe river. We can intercept their ships.”

Quirinus
disagreed. “The minute they think they’re in danger of losing him to you, Arthur will be thrown over the side,” he said. “Maximian won’t let him live to fight again.”

“We
can’t storm the place, we couldn’t get enough force there in time,” said Grabelius. “The prisoners will be moved on in a matter of days. We could try to slip in a small group, or we could hope to surprise the ships that take them to Maximian, maybe ambush them from a fishing boat?”

“Perhaps,”
said Guinevia, “we could sabotage their ships so they have to take him by land? That way, we might have a better chance at an ambush, especially if we get help from our new allies in Belgica?”

Whatever
course they chose, the council decided they needed to have someone in Gaul, in Bononia and in a likely landing place, maybe Forum Hadriani, and in the shortest possible time at that. Grimr left to organise two warships and get them across the straits with picked crews of marines. Grabelius sent word of Arthur’s situation to the newly-allied kings, and to spies in Gaul and Belgica, using the carrier pigeons that had been sent to coordinate war preparations. “Will messenger birds do the job?” Quirinus asked.

“They
were good enough for Gaius Julius Caesar centuries ago, they’ll do for us,” said Grabelius grimly.

Guinevia
excused herself and went to her viewing chamber, to psychically send out her mind and see what she could discover, and to commune with her gods, especially with Ogmia, lord of letters and dangerous words.

She
took a piece of papyrus, pricked her finger with an awl and squeezed out a blot of blood. Dipping her split-reed pen carefully into it, she inscribed the acronym that represented the secret oath of Ogmia’s sect, then carefully set fire to the papyrus and dropped the ashes into a small saucer. Using her thumb in a circular motion that she was careful to move sunwise so as not to defy the order the gods decreed, she ground the ashes to grit, then scattered it onto a small piece of clean linen to see what pattern it formed.

The
image seemed clear: four vertical lines, the second and third interrupted and shortened. “Prison bars,” the druid said aloud. “Broken prison bars. My Caros will escape!” She turned to her obsidian viewing block, a smooth brick of black volcanic glass like her sorcerer mentor Myrddin’s. Closing her mind to the outside world, she sank into its hazy depths and there clearly saw Arthur, bruised, one eye swollen shut, the other blood-encrusted, sitting against a stone wall. Around his neck was a slave collar.

The
scene shifted and Guinevia had a seagull’s view of the Gallic coast and the familiar walls of Bononia, where she and Arthur, then called Carausius, had first made love. The memory caught at her throat. That, she knew, was where he was incarcerated, and was the place from which he would escape. She hurried from the chamber. She wanted to get word to Grimr and the other tribunes to have ships waiting…

Chapter XVII - Cesti

My damaged eye was a nuisance and had kept me awake, but that wakefulness had been useful. I was locked alone in a freezing cell in the older, western tower of Bononia’s keep, a tower I knew well enough as the citadel had once been mine. The Romans, who actually were auxiliaries from Dacia, had fine sport with us before they pushed us into our cells and had handed out beatings with spear hafts.

Although
I was bound, my hands were before me, and I had grabbed one bastard’s spear shaft and head-butted him unconscious, which earned me some extra attentions and I woke up to find myself in a slave collar that was chained to the wall. Between the bruises and my painfully-throbbing eye, I’d lain awake and had heard a useful exchange between two sentries when they changed the guard around midnight.

The
gist of it was that we were to be shipped to the Rhine to Maximian’s
oppidum
. Seemingly, he was still busily engaged with the Alemanni despite the lateness of the year. We would be taken by ship as the snowstorms in northern Gaul had made land travel difficult, and we were waiting for a couple of suitably stout vessels to arrive from the river Scheldt.

The
other nugget of information was more useful. The guard I had head-butted was notoriously quick-tempered and had vowed to his comrades that he would take something out of my hide, emperor’s orders or not. I remembered that he was a big man, as big or bigger than myself, and he must have been shamed that a bound prisoner had floored him. There might be a possibility here, I mused, and for the first time in days I found myself smiling. I had an idea.

Years
before, as a teenage legionary, I had trained at Carnutum, a military outpost on the amber trade route where it crossed the Danube.

The
Apollonian XV Legion was garrisoned there and the settlement housed a gladiator complex that was part prison and part training barracks for arena fighters. Our tribune’s name, Cevius Paulus, came to me across the years so clearly that I had the image of his heavily-scarred eyebrows. He had unusual ideas about fighting and sent us infantrymen for extra tuition from the gladiator trainers.

“You’ll
learn hand to hand tactics that will not be found in the military manuals, but they could save your lives,” he told us young soldiers as we listened, usually open-mouthed. “You don’t go in to fight fair,” the instructors beat into us. “You go in to leave the other fellow on the ground, bleeding and unconscious. If you know your way around a fight, you’ll be calm, and that will let you move better and be more deadly.”

The
instructors spelled it out: “Most of the enemies you’ll face will be undisciplined barbarians crazed on mushrooms or mead. If you are collected and calm, you’ll have the advantage. The difference for you over the gladiators is that you should survive your army years because you’ll usually fight inferior foes. Gladiators won’t, they’ll face men trained like themselves. That’s why they are allowed to retire from the arena as free men after six years or 30 bouts – because very few survive that long. Most die on the sand after six bouts or even fewer.”

The
message got to me clear and loud. I liked the idea of surviving when others did not, I liked the idea of earning booty and a piece of land for my time in the legions. So I paid attention.

The
instructors trained us with extra-heavy weapons. It built muscle and when we fought using a sword of regular weight we wielded it faster and easier. In most combat, I had the advantage of size and my time on the frontier, in skirmish after skirmish, had made me experienced. Against a big-mouthed Dacian who knew so little of street fighting that he’d allowed a bound prisoner to stun him cold, I should have a huge advantage, despite being temporarily one-eyed. After all, I faced only one foe.

My
chance came the very next day. We prisoners had all been paraded out into a small courtyard on the west side of the citadel to use the latrines and the big Dacian was waiting for me. I evaded the spear butt he thrust to trip me and deliberately spat at his feet. He snarled and lunged to cuff me, but I blocked the blow with my forearm.

“You’re
pretty brave to take on a bound man,” I jeered at him. “How do you fancy your chances one on one, properly?” He had no choice. A squad of his comrades were around him, I was a prisoner he’d boasted he would thrash, and I must have looked a sorry sight, battered and blood-crusted.

“I’ll
crush you, Briton,” he growled. “You’re cooked.”

An
officer heard the remarks. “No weapons,” he said curtly. “The prisoner is to survive.” I glanced at him, young, with an aristocratic accent.

The
Dacian, whose name I later found was Brandarke, grunted. “Battle gloves, then,” he said. It was a good choice.
Cesti
were leather gloves, sometimes reinforced with metal that were used for non-lethal fist fighting. They were made of leather strips that wrapped around the fists, wrists and forearms.

Some
variants had blades or spikes that protruded to cause gory cuts even from a glancing blow and were mostly used in the arena when slaves were forced to fight each other to the death. An especially lethal example of the gloves was called a ‘limb-stabber’ and was a thick leather glove with a pronged bronze fork fixed to it, effectively turning the glove into a punching knife.

Two
guards untied my hands and I felt the blood flow into them, tingling painfully as feeling was restored. I dabbed at my closed left eye, it was still swollen fast. I was without sandals in the snow, and my mutilated foot, legacy of a crazed Saxon warrior’s axe blow, looked blue with cold. I limped on it as convincingly as I could, drawing the Dacian’s attention to it. He grinned. I was going to be easier than he’d thought.

As
I wrapped my fists, noting that my cesti were leather with only a few metal studs in them, a centurion was laying out the rules of combat. “Anything is allowed except eye-gouging or biting,” he said. “The first to knock the other unconscious wins. Anyone who interferes with the fight will be punished. Go to it.”

Someone
tied off the leather thongs just below my elbows and I glanced to where the Dacian was adjusting his battle gloves. They seemed to have substantial metal plates across the knuckles and I caught the gleam of a blade between the fingers. The bastard’s cesti were much more lethal than the ones on my hands. I gripped the leather that lay transverse inside my fists. He probably had metal bars hidden in his palms. I was going to have to be more careful about exchanging blows.

As
I assessed my opponent’s stance, wondering about his footing in the rutted ice and slush, I saw he had tucked a small dagger into his sandal thongs above the ankle. Another thing to guard against, I thought.

My
dozen men, hands still bound, were herded to one side under the courtyard’s high wall, with three spear-carrying guards around them. The officer, centurion and the other three guards had watched my release and were waiting for the show. I glanced upwards. No sentries in sight on the wall above.

The
handlers stepped back and we were shuffling through the slush, circling each other. Back slightly bent, I thought, knees flexing through the stiffness, left forearm extended a little to protect the guts, right fist cocked. The Dacian whirled in swinging his iron-bound fists. I rocked backwards, felt a scrape across my forehead and a warm gush of blood where he’d cut me. He was fast.

Keep
circling, dash away the blood leaking into my right eye, watch his eyes, catch the blink he makes just before he moves, sway left, punch upwards hard. My fist connected with the hinge of his jaw, his head rocked backwards and he went down, cold. I half-stumbled over him, seeming to put down my left hand to steady myself, and slipped the dagger from its place at his ankle. It hid easily in my hand and I allowed myself, gasping dramatically, to be pulled to my feet by a couple of soldiers.

Chapter XVIII - Ferrata

Brandarke was undoubtedly out cold, mouth open, flat on his back in the slushy snow. The officer looked at me, disappointed that the fight had been so brief. I hung my head and shuffled a pace or two to one side as he leaned over Brandarke to confirm his condition. The legionaries were also gazing at their downed comrade.

In
two steps, I was behind the young officer, the concealed knife at his throat, his helmet clattering to the ground, his hair in my hand, yanking his head back. One soldier levelled a spear, the officer was shouting for him to kill me until I jabbed the dagger point into his neck and felt the warm flow of his blood across my hand. “Kill me, and the emperor will have all of you flogged,” I said. “He wants me alive, remember? You, cut him loose.” I gestured at the nearest Dacian to release one of my soldiers.

The
officer said coolly, “Do it. We’ll soon catch this scum. They’re going nowhere.”

Our
troopers were cut free, we had the officer and the centurion lashed with our old bonds, and it took only moments, with no alarm raised. I recalled the familiar layout of my onetime fortress and chose a discreet route. We walked the disarmed legionaries quietly out of the courtyard, through the transept and, partly concealed by the outer, curtain wall of the citadel, to a windowless stone granary.

The
rest of the garrison noticed nothing as we put a handful of our men in with the prisoners under orders to slit the throats of any who tried to raise an alarm, and I led the rest of my raiders openly down to the harbour. I wanted to commandeer a ship, but the tide was out, the harbour was dry. We were marooned, at least for now. I cursed the clowns who had built the city on a harbour that emptied with every tide. It had cost me the siege a few years ago, as the Romans had thrown up a mole across the harbour mouth, sealed out any relief from the sea, and forced the surrender of the garrison.

My
plan to sail away was ruined, and I knew we could hardly expect to remain in the citadel undetected for another six or eight hours, so I formed up the squad and we marched boldly back to the granary as if it we had every right to be there. The lounging sentries on the wall and tower above us – slack auxiliaries, I huffed – ignored us.

Inside
the granary, we took the Dacians’ cloaks and helmets, but left the young officer his red mantle. We already had the troopers’ weapons. My Britons donned the helmets and disguising cloaks, we bound and gagged the Dacians, draping them in our own cloaks and some grain sacks to conceal the bonds, then formed them up in the small courtyard as if they were prisoners being taken out of the barracks under our escort.

At
the gate, the sentries on the arch above us stiffened when they saw the officer. I nudged him in the back with a punching dagger. He knew what to do, and shakily ordered the gates opened. We marched out to the south under several sets of curious eyes and I knew we were going to have only a slender lead.

The
positive news was that it was late afternoon, the light was failing and a few snowflakes were suggesting some bad weather would conceal us. We marched briskly south, and after a mile or more, turned abruptly west through woodland that might help disguise our path. We were not more than a quarter mile from the road when I heard horses galloping. The alarm had been raised. We jabbed our still-gagged prisoners forward with more urgency and after another mile, still in woodland, tied them to trees as best we could, using the sacking and their own belts and harness. We kept them as far separated from each other as possible. Any delay in finding them could be vital.

At
a jog trot, we headed away, swerving towards the coast once we were out of sight of the Dacians. I needed to find a ship. We knew this coastline, it had once been ours and even in the now-cloaking darkness I could determine our rough position, so we headed for a cove that acted as an unofficial harbour. The locals used it to avoid customs taxes, and I had come across it in my pirate-hunting days.

A
notch in the cliffs held a deep channel, with water enough for a fishing boat to ride right up to the rock. Locals had driven iron pegs into the cliffs to tie up their ships, and had continued a line of iron hoops up the cliff’s ledges to form what they called the ‘Via Ferrata’ or ‘Iron Way’. This allowed sailors and fishermen safe passage from the shingle to the cliff top.

Above
the cove, mostly concealed by a couple of large boulders, was a primitive gallows hoist that let the smugglers or fishermen haul up cargo or catch. Because the notch in the cliffs was angled, the cove was not obvious from the sea, making a semi-secret harbour the garrison was unlikely to know about, even though it was within eight miles of their barracks.

We
arrived at the top of the Via Ferrata, hoping to find a ship in the cove below, but the place was empty. “We’ll go down there anyway,” I said, conscious that this could be a rat trap if no ship came, or if the legionaries discovered us. Staying on the cliff tops, come daylight, would be fatal anyway. We scrambled down and huddled in the corner of a rock chimney to await the dawn. I muttered an invocation to all the gods, and they heard me.

At
dawn, a trading ship that had been hove-to waiting for daylight before approaching through the shoals came nudging cautiously in. We saw her before she spotted us, and by that time, only four of us were in sight, weaponless and pretending to be searching the small beach.

When
I ruled Bononia, I knew the trader who owned the vessel, a bile-filled creature called Teranes. I despised him as a simpering two-beer queer who used to haunt the military barracks and the nearby wine shops trying to ingratiate himself with young soldiers. He was a petty smuggler and dealer in doubtful goods who used the cove to escape the notice of the authorities. This day, he was unsuspicious and anxious to reach shore.

“
Good, glad you are here, we need help, we must urgently offload this cargo,” he said, not recognizing me. He looked startled when I gestured the rest of our troop out of the shadows.

“What,
” I asked, “is the hurry?”

The
cargo, it turned out, was sacks of grain on top of a consignment of cedar wood. Somehow, the timber stowed deep in the hull of the ship had combusted and had been smouldering for several days. Now, it was toasting the grain, and in time would burn through. Teranes was fearful of his ship sinking, and taking him with it.

“We’ve
poured water into the hold, but the fire is still alive,” he wailed. He wanted the grain out of the ship so he could extinguish the cedar wood. I was not so sure, however, that I wanted to unload the grain. If we did, allowing oxygen to the fire could cause it to flare up and destroy both the ship and our means of escape, and the plume of smoke would doubtless being the searchers down on us.

I
took a sword from one of my marines, waved it around vaguely and told the trader and his men to get off the ship, we would deal with their emergency for them. The way up the cliff is that way, and good day to you, ladies. I saw that Teranes’ servile crew were secretly smiling at his discomfiture, for he was a petty-minded complainer who did not treat them well.

He
stood sniffing disconsolately on the shingle, flinching as my fighting men moved past to board the stolen vessel, but at least we did deal with the emergency for him. We eased the burning ship out of the cove and into the Narrow Sea, on our way to Britain.

At
first, we sailed west, parallel to the coast, while I assessed the situation. If it got worse, we could turn for the land and find another ship. I had one of our marines monitor the well of the ship to see how much it was leaking.

“Dry
as old sawdust, lord,” he reported.

“Check
again,” I ordered. The result was the same. I took a breath, turned the bows north and as dusk began to fall, saw the white coast of Gaul slip beneath the horizon.

The
fat negotiator, for that was what Romans called traders, did himself well, and we found and ate his rations and drank his good Rhenish wine. The ship was burbling along, the snow flurries had ceased and we had a crisp, cold starlit night to start our voyage home. Most of our troop was sleeping, I was dozing, wrapped in the young officer’s warm cloak and regretful at the loss of my fine sword Exalter, when something scurried across my feet.

In
the moonlight, I saw several more shapes. Rats. Awake now, I looked around the ship. All seemed quiet. Then I heard a noise above the slap of the rigging, a deep creaking noise and a crack. I roused a marine, told him to check the water level in the ship’s well. He took an oil lamp and scrambled away. He came back with a dipstick that was totally, utterly dry.

“Check
it again,” I ordered, as a cold sensation spread through my chest. The marine was back, the dipstick was absolutely dry, and a loud creak and then a crack split the night quiet.

“It’s
the grain, captain,” said the sailor Donac, a salt-stained, battle-hardened northerner who had been with me for years and who had probably sailed more distance than all the rest of us added together. “There’s water got into the grain and it’s swelling. It’s bursting the ship apart.”

Cursing,
I ran to the bow and peered over. The seams of the smooth-sided, carvel-planked ship were opening and closing like long mouths. The seawater must be pouring in along the length of the ship, but it wasn’t showing in the bilges because the grain was soaking it up, swelling, and forcing the seams ever wider. The ship was dying.

For
long hours, we fought to save her. We battled to free the big grain sacks that were jammed ever tighter against each other, then we threw them over the side, but the water continued to come in, the grain kept swelling and the ship wallowed deeper and deeper as she pushed herself apart.

Wolf
light came, and we were exhausted. We could not see land in any direction, and our gunwales were now only a foot or so above the mercifully-smooth sea, but the lightest chop would be enough to swamp her. Even if the sea stayed glassy calm it could only be an hour or so before the end.

I
ordered the masts, spars and oars tied together to be ready as flotation aids and threw them over the side, trailed at rope’s end as our life rafts. A few of us might survive in the icy water for a short time after the ship sank, and doing anything was better than not trying at all. We had long since thrown overboard everything we could to lighten the load, all the cargo we could wrench free, the water butt, precious swords, weapons of all kinds, rigging and sailing equipment, even the sails themselves.

The
ship wallowed soggily, a dying creature, and I prepared mentally for the feasting halls of the afterlife. I didn’t know if I would be going to the Norse Valhalla, or the Celtic Tir na Nog, but I was ready to cross the Bridge of Judgement and I called cheerfully to the men that soon we’d be warm and dry again, swiving with maidens and drinking with our lost friends in the Otherworld.

Then
Donac’s keen, seawise eyes spotted our salvation. “Sail, a sail!” he called. We hoisted a big spar up, a scrap of someone’s tunic lashed to the top, and waved it as best we could. The sail, blue like the Romans’ galley sheets, shortened, then turned towards us. We had been seen.

To
our astonishment, it was Grimr in his longship Waveblade, sent out in response to Guinevia’s visions and on his way to the coast of Gaul to find us. The sea god Manannan mac Lir had pushed us east with the in-flow of the mighty Atlanticus so that we were in Grimr’s path. He was quickly alongside, and we reached up gratefully to climb over the gunwales of Waveblade only ten or so minutes before the foundering trader ship slipped quietly under the sea, almost without a ripple.

“To
Britain, please,” I laughed at Grimr. “I’m ready for some dry clothes and a warm woman.”

The
Suehan sea raider grinned back. “Not sure I should help some escaped slave,” he said, gesturing to my neck. I felt at my throat. I was still wearing the metal slave collar the Dacians had locked onto me. I bore the symbol of a slave, but was going home as the Imperator.