Hadrian's wall (26 page)

"True enough. Still, the wedding-"

"Empty vows are no vows at all. She lives here now."

The tribune snorted. "Until she gets a chance to betray you. Wake up, man! Rut her if you wish, but never forget she's Roman. The purebloods live for intrigue."

"I don't think she's Roman anymore."

"Then you're naive."

"Look. She gave me this." Arden took from a pouch something small and bright. Valeria stiffened and felt Savia do the same.

It was her ring, the one given to her on her wedding night by Marcus. She'd forgotten she'd let him slip it off at Samhain and put it in the golden cup.

Galba recognized it. "By the gods, you've bedded her, haven't you? And she's driven you crazy as a result! Does she taste as good as she looks?"

"Shut up, Thracian pig, or you'll not leave my fort alive." This time the low warning was unmistakable and deadly.

Galba held his hands up in mock apology. "I'm just saying she's an eyeful."

"She has more courage than most men."

"And how many men have courage?" The tribune looked at the ring with interest. "I don't care what you do with her. I wish I had that bauble, though. I'm missing one from my chain of trophies." Valeria heard the clink of his waist belt.

"You're a bastard, Brassidias."

"I'm a survivor. And you'll learn her nature soon enough. Don't be a fool."

"It's you who are the fool, Galba. You who have never loved."

"And how do you know I've never loved?" There was a silence of surprise at the tribune's hurt expression. Indeed, who knew anything about Galba's past?

"I don't," the chieftain conceded. "I just know I love this woman."

Galba burst out laughing. Any tenderness had been a pretense. "Love, love! Fair enough. It's all the Christians talk about, you know, this love they claim."

"It's a powerful thing."

"Yes." He laughed again. "And now you'll go to kill her husband!"

Savia tugged on Valeria to pull her away, taking advantage of the noise of Galba's laughter. The women crept away to leave the conspirators to talk into the night.

"The men in your life have all betrayed and abandoned you, lady," her slave whispered angrily. "You've been married off for money and position by your father, abandoned by your husband, seduced, mocked, and now plotted against."

"Where's the Arden I knew last night?" Valeria mourned. "He's nothing but a conspirator with Galba! Men use love like a cheap coin!"

Savia sighed. "Who knows what he really wants or thinks? Did you really give him your ring?"

"Just in a cup, for a moment. Was last night false, Savia?"

"Fleeting."

"I thought my life had changed forever."

"Don't you think every young heart believes that?"

She groaned. "I don't know what I believe."

"Believe in law and duty, mistress. Because when men fail you, as they eventually must, order is all that's left."

They crept back to their chamber, Valeria tortured. What just the night before had seemed impossibly distant-Rome! — had come crashing back into her life with Galba's arrival. The man was a traitor! An enemy of her husband! An ally of her lover! And that made Arden…

She threw herself down on her bed. Where did her emotions lie?

Where did her loyalty lie?

Beware the one you trust, the seer had said in Londinium. Trust the one you beware. What did that mean? Who was who, which side was which?

She was sleepless, in an agony of indecision. Finally she slipped on her cloak and went back outside. It was late night, Galba's horse still waiting. Yet already signal fires were being lit on surrounding hills. Messengers were saddling up to ride to the four winds. Military opportunity wouldn't last long. Arden would call a gathering of the clans for a march against the Wall. A march against Rome.

Thousands would die.

Including, possibly, Marcus and Arden.

Yet the barbarian plan hinged on surprise. If she could reach Marcus before the northern tribes struck, he in turn could warn the duke. Reinforcements could be sent. Faced with the full assembly of Roman power, the Celts could do nothing but retreat.

Marcus would be saved.

Arden would be saved.

And once more she'd be with her husband. It was what she should want, shouldn't she? Surely it was where her duty lay.

Duty! How many times she had scorned that word! Now she understood its importance. In following it, she would save the two men in her life, and save Rome. Yet in following it she would put behind her the happiest moment of her life.

Why, then, was her heart like a stone after resolving to carry out this plan? Why did she feel that she, too, was being forced into some kind of treachery?

She loathed leaving Arden. She ached for his touch. Yet she must get back to the Wall before Galba and spread the alarm.

She summoned Savia.

"Valeria left you behind?"

I am surprised. Throughout this narrative Savia has been portraying herself as the lady's closest confidant and steadfast friend. It seems strange that Valeria would ride off alone. I feel some sympathy for the loneliness the slave must have felt, like a dog abandoned by its master.

"It was the only way to buy time before they started pursuit," Savia explains matter-of-factly. Having won my alliance, she is not inclined to pity herself. "She slipped out of the hill fort shortly before dawn as she had before, her months in Caledonia giving her a better notion of which way to go this time. Arden had gambled that he'd win her heart by the time she knew enough to find her way, but he hadn't reckoned with her loyalties. She had to beat Galba to Petrianis."

"So you somehow persuaded them that she was still at Tiranen?"

"I pretended that Valeria was sick after Samhain and that I was tending the woman in her room. It helped that she'd slept with Arden. The other women were hesitant about pushing their way in because she had rank and power now. I also hinted that Valeria's heart was confused because she was already married. I suggested she was trying to sort out her choices and wished to be left alone while she did it."

"This worked?"

"For a day. By then it was too late to catch her."

"Did not Arden want to see her?"

"He was busy making preparations for war. But yes, of course he came looking for her. The man was in love. It was plain in his face and in his bearing."

"A happy foolishness," I suggest.

"Well put, inspector. You know from your own experience, perhaps?"

I admit such experience only to myself, a scabbed memory of hope and pain. "I have seen it in other men." My authority is maintained by solitude, I remind myself: by never confiding weakness, by never caring too much. There's some Galba in me, I suppose. "I'm surprised he accepted your excuses."

"He was confused and hurt that she wouldn't let him in. I told him that Valeria was confused herself, an explanation men readily swallow because of their low opinion of women and exalted opinion of themselves."

I let this pass without correction.

"He was also frantic with haste. It was late in the year, not the traditional warring season, but it was also past the harvest so men could ready quickly. If the barbarians were to take advantage of Roman weakness, they had to strike before the Wall was reinforced or winter became too deep. Their plan was to attack everywhere at once to keep garrisons from reinforcing each other. Whichever chieftain broke through first would fall upon the rear of the Romans at the next assault point."

"You seem to have a grasp of strategy."

"The Celts don't command, they lead. Arden had to explain the plan to the assembly in the Great House if anyone was to follow him. It didn't really matter if word reached the Romans. The question was exactly where the attacks would come, and exactly when."

"Of course. Still, the barbarians seem to have had more cunning and organization than I assumed. Perhaps my report can lay the blame for what happened on Celtic strategy, not Roman jealousies."

She shrugs. "They are brave and smart. But as an army…"

"Disorganized?"

"Independent. Individualistic. They join together, but in his heart each warrior is his own general. They fight not for an empire but for themselves. Not for victory so much as glory. Not for land but for loot. I listened to their boasting as weapons were sharpened and shields uncovered. They each wanted to be the hero."

"Which is why Rome has beaten them again and again."

"And why they are beaten but never conquered."

I pause, pondering her point. Then: "How did they finally discover that Valeria was gone?"

"Asa was suspicious and stole in while I slept. She sounded the alarm, and men came with swords drawn, dragging me out of bed."

"You must have been terrified."

"I wept and begged." She recounts this without shame, slaves allowed honesty denied their betters. Again, I envy them.

"Did you tell them that Valeria had gone to warn Marcus?"

"I told them that she'd left without telling. I suggested she was confused about love. Arden might have believed this, but none of the others were so blind. Galba wanted to roast me until I told the truth."

"Yet you are here, unroasted." It is a little joke, and draws only a little smile.

"Arden intervened. He said that even if she'd fled to the Wall, the Romans had no time to get more troops, and that frantic vigilance against impending attack would only tire them. He said he'd pledged no harm to me and was keeping that pledge. The men grumbled, but none dared challenge him. They thought that in everything else he was sensible, but on the issue of Valeria he was insane. It had become a fact of clan life. Galba left for the Wall, and the rest speeded their preparations."

"Kalin had tolerated and even fostered Arden's infatuation. What did he say?"

"He cast the future. He cut out the entrails of a sheep and studied them for signs. He threw the bones of fortune. He looked through one of those hollowed stones, a Keek Stane. He said Valeria's departure was the sign that they'd waited for; that her return to the Wall meant final war. He foresaw a great battle, the death of the enemies of the Caledonii, and a return to the old ways after a dark and bloody time."

"Did you believe him?"

"I didn't want to, but his troubled expression made me wonder. Prophets who only tell people what they want to hear are frauds because the future is never entirely in our favor. Those who admit uneasiness are more convincing. He'd seen something that confused him, and in the march south I had a chance to ask him. He told me he'd seen not just the oak but the cross. He asked me about my god again and how a holy man like Jesus, who seemed so weak, had become, in the retelling, so strong."

"He feared Christians."

"More than legionaries, I think. Kalin had the curse of knowing too much."

"It was foolish to assault Rome." I sound more arrogant than I feel, but it is a confidence based on a thousand years of history, an arrogance we Romans are born to. Savia looks at me in disbelief. "Of course, the barbarian horde was just barely turned back," I concede.

"And yet you seek to blame a single young woman." Her tone is disapproving.

"For her bewitchments," I justify myself. "She frustrated Galba. She was faithless to her husband. She broke the heart of her lover."

"It was they who abandoned and betrayed her," Savia counters. "All she was doing was to try to save them from themselves."

I ponder this view. This slave remains too loyal to her mistress, perhaps, but I'm intrigued by her perspective. Certainly I'm intrigued by Savia herself, as intrigued as a man can be by a woman.

"She provoked disloyalty," I insist.

Savia shakes her head. "She was the only one loyal. She was the one who tried to save them all…"

The drums and signal fires started with the Roman woman's disappearance. The Wall was weak, and Valeria had fled with warning. The tribes must strike before the Romans could prepare.

Galba and his guards pounded out of Tiranen in hot pursuit of the fugitive, even as great Celtic war horns blew from the hill-fort towers to signal any who were away to return and join the approach of war. Young Gurn rode too, sent to give final word to the Picts and the Scotti to join with the Attacotti in the great assault. All across the empire's northwestern frontiers the host was mustering, not just in Caledonia but on the shores of Eiru and Friesland and Germania. Longboats were slid into the cold winter sea, and horses were brought from stables, their nostrils steaming in the cold. On a hundred hills the watchfires burned, and in a hundred hill forts warriors oiled mail, sharpened sword and spearhead, bundled arrows, tucked bowstrings in their tunics for protection from the weather, ground ax heads, studded clubs, and packed bread, dried fruit, and dried meat in bundled cloaks. The air was electric, voices pitched higher and louder than normal from the anticipation of assault. Only Brisa, the arrow maid, went about her preparations in a mood of sorrow.

"I thought she'd become one of us," she mourned. "I thought Morrigan had chosen her." She felt the bitterness of having been abandoned by a friend. "She didn't even say good-bye."

A barbarian clan had none of the baggage, animal train, or heavy artillery of a Roman army. If less disciplined, it was also less burdened.

Arden's contingent of one hundred warriors, with another hundred women and children and old men following to cook and clean and help scavenge for booty, streamed down from Tiranen in loose formation like water finding its own course, quick and opportunistic. A few of the richest and noblest rode warhorses, but Arden, who could have done so, chose to accompany the majority who marched south on foot, each armed as best he could afford, shields strapped to backs, spears shouldered with a bag of rations suspended hanging just back of the tip, waterskins slung, and cloaks tied back that each could wrap himself in when they paused for the long winter nights. Weaponry was as individualistic as its owners, a mix of decorated spear, sword, lance, javelin, ax, club, sling, bow, and stave. Hounds sprang in and out of the procession or loped alongside, children tagged on the edges to herd a few goats and sheep that would make early provisions, and a few chickens clucked from the wicker cages that the camp wives bore on their backs. The high grass was frosted like an old man's beard, the streams ran like molten lead between skins of new ice, and the pine and fir were dull against the flanks of snow-crested hills. The mud of the track had hardened, crystals frozen in its fissures, and the sky was like a cowl.

Plumes of signal smoke rose from ridge after ridge into the gray overcast, calling the clans to war. Kalin the druid strode in the soldiers' midst, his countenance so grim that he kept his face half hidden within his hood. He bore the burden of the future, of course, and no warrior envied him that: better to live for now. Walking her pony next to him was the freed Roman that the high lady had abandoned, the former slave Savia. She looked just as unhappy at this swelling tide.

As Arden's modest contingent marched in a long brown line down the valley that led to the south, other bands began to join like the tributaries of a river. The union was always a similar pattern. A single figure would be silhouetted on a ridge above at first, watching the growing army and flashing greeting with a mirror if the sun had broken, or waving a banner if it had not. Then other heads would appear, looking from below as if they were rising from the ground: two, six, a dozen, until suddenly there were scores of warriors lining the horizon, assembled as if for inspection. Great shouts would go up, from above and below, a mixture of greeting and genial insult as each group boasted that its warriors were the bravest, its blades the sharpest, its women the most beautiful, its horses the swiftest, its dogs the hardiest, and its leaders the craftiest. Then the newcomers would spill down the slope hooting their cheers, waving spear and battle-ax, sword and bow, and collide with Arden's force in a mixture of hugs and good-natured pummeling, finally finding place in the growing host that marched toward the Wall. This was happening not just along Arden's course but in half a dozen other vales that led from Caledonia's mountains toward the border of Britannia. The entire north was awake, and every able spear and sword was moving toward the Roman barrier. Here came Caldo Twin-Axe, his namesake weapons strapped in an X pattern on his back, leading twenty horsemen and fifty infantry. Waiting at the Dell of Beech was Rufus Braxus and forty companions, a dozen of them good bowmen. Giles Darren and Soren Longsword joined the advance with their clans, and then Owen Spearpony, the north's best wrestler, came striding in with an iron mace on his shoulder. The warrior woman Brigantia the Brave arrived with a new subtly curved sword, as lovely as a waterfall, that she brandished gleefully while galloping on her horse. Soon the horde had swelled to more than a thousand, and then two thousand, with a thousand camp followers besides. Still they poured from the hills, an eruption of might and pent-up passion to sweep aside Hadrian's millions of stones and let the island be whole again.

"There are more spears than the stars of Caledonia," Luca marveled to Brisa.

And this was solely the contingent of Arden Caratacus. Other armies were marching, and fast fleets of seaborne raiders were setting out to strike the southern coasts of Britannia and the fringes of Gaul. The long months of talks, threats, and promises had at last paid off. For once, the barbarians were acting in concert. Never had they managed such a numerical advantage. Never had they set out to attack so many places at once.

Even the sky seemed in league. Scudding cloud blew southward, against the Wall. The rain and sleet were at their backs, and into the teeth of the Romans.