In the Shadow of the Wall (14 page)

“Of course!” Colm beamed. “And three new slaves into the bargain. It turned out to be a good day after all.” He took Brude’s arm. “Come! Walk with me a way and I’ll show you what we’ve done here. The place has changed a lot since you left.”

Colm wandered through the stockade, Brude at his side. The head man pointed out the long buildings that he said housed his warriors.

“You’re building an army?” Brude asked him.

“I am making Broch Tava strong,” Colm corrected him. “Already the farms and villages along the coast look to me for protection, even those more than half way to Peart. They all send a share of their produce here to Broch Tava.”

Brude thought to himself that people were the same wherever he found them. Colm would have made a good Roman, and if the Romans ever did come back, no doubt he would be one of the first to adopt their customs in exchange for being allowed to stay as leader of his own little empire.

Colm was in good humour as he introduced Brude to Caroc, the smith, who growled a greeting in a gravelly voice before returning to his work. “He doesn’t say much,” Colm laughed, “but his work is excellent. He is of the Damnonii and they are the best iron workers of all the Pritani. Fortunately, I persuaded him to come here to help build our village into a real town.”

They left Caroc to his work, circling to the back of the broch where Colm showed him the pens where they kept half a dozen pigs. There was another small building backing onto the broch with two more spearmen guarding it. They stood aside as Colm approached. One of them unbarred the door and pulled it open at Colm’s signal. Colm ducked inside, gesturing for Brude to follow. The room was small and windowless, reminding Brude of slave cells he had experienced at first hand in the empire. He saw immediately that that was exactly what it was.

Three men lay on the hard, earthen floor. Brude recognised them, although they had been badly beaten. One of them looked at him with sullen eyes. It was Oengus of Peart. “You are keeping Gartnait’s son as a slave?” he asked in surprise.

Colm nonchalantly kicked out at Oengus, forcing him to squirm back against the wall. “It’s what he deserves. He stole my bull and my son.”

“Won’t Gartnait cause trouble for you?”

font color="black">Colm laughed. He was enjoying this display of his authority. “I am stronger than Gartnait now,” he said. “If he wants his son back, he will have to pay in cattle, gold or silver. But I doubt he will bother. He has other sons.” He sounded as though he didn’t care one way or the other what Gartnait did.

Brude looked at the other two men. Cet, the small man, had a swollen eye and was nursing his left hand. Fothair, the tall man, was lying down, eyes closed, only the slight movement of his chest showing he was alive. His clothes were ripped and bloody. Crude bandages had been wrapped round his chest and his left leg. Brude noticed that Colm was watching his face to see how he reacted, but Brude had been a slave for long enough to know how to maintain a blank expression. He had asked Colm not to harm Fothair yet he was the worst injured of the three. Brude reckoned that was deliberate.

Colm ushered him outside again, leaving the three men under the care of the guards. As they walked slowly back to the doorway of the broch, Brude had an idea. “Those slaves! Are they for sale?”

Colm was surprised. “What? Those three? Perhaps. For the right price.”

“I could do with a slave,” said Brude. “I’ll need to build a place of my own and an extra pair of hands would be useful.”

“If you can afford one of them, you can have him,” said Colm. He sounded as if he was sure Brude could not afford the price. He seemed amused. Brude guessed Colm was setting a test of some sort and he suspected that he was probably failing it. Still, Fothair had been hurt because of him and he could not let it rest. “Why don’t you come down to the village? I’ll show you what I can offer,” he suggested.

Colm hesitated. He was the head man and others should come to him, but Brude was supposed to be his friend and he was in a good mood so he agreed, although he signalled for the giant Cruithne to follow them.

At Seoras’ house Brude asked his mother to bring some food and water for Colm, which she did less than graciously while Brude brought out a bolt of fine, red-dyed linen and some gold rings. Colm was impressed despite himself. He agreed that Brude could have one of the men for his personal slave. “I’ll have the small man sent down,” Colm told him. “I’d prefer to keep Gartnait’s son myself.”

Brude shook his head. “You can keep both of them. I’ll take the tall one, Fothair his name is.”

“He’s half dead,” said Colm scornfully. “He will probably die on you.”

“I’ll take that chance. can always buy the other one from you if he does die.”

“You have more of this stuff?” Colm asked, indicating the cloth and gold.

“Not much now you’ve got that lot,” Brude admitted as amiably as he could. He knew that he had paid well over the usual rate for a slave but he felt he owed Fothair something. By now he was convinced that Colm had singled him out precisely because Brude had asked him not to. And although Colm’s expression betrayed nothing, Brude reckoned he had known from the start that Brude had wanted to buy Fothair. All of this was a way for Colm to show Brude who was in charge.

Colm stood, passing the cloth to Cruithne to carry while he pocketed the gold rings himself. He looked at Brude thoughtfully. “Things have changed since you left, Brude, you have seen that. But you have changed, too. You are not the Brude I remember.”

“That was a long time ago,” Brude shrugged. “We were both very young then.” He was tempted to say that Colm had changed too, except that Colm was basically as he remembered him. He wondered why they had ever been friends. Yet for the sake of that old friendship he said, “We all change as we grow older, Colm, but that does not mean we cannot still be friends, or at the very least not enemies.” He did not give Colm a chance to reply. “Speaking of enemies, you should know that I heard the emperor has come to Britannia. The Romans may come here.”

Colm gave him a mocking look. “Let them come. Their army left these lands many generations ago. When they come now, it is to bring gifts of silver and fine jewellery.”

“The Romans have been here?” Brude was surprised.

“Of course!” Colm laughed. “They often sail up the coast. They stop here, from time to time, seeking our friendship. The Romans are not as strong as you imagine, Brude. And even if they do come as enemies, we are strong here. They cannot defeat us in our own home.”

Brude stared at him. He was about to argue, to tell Colm of the things he had seen, to tell him that a Roman legion had over five thousand armed men and siege weapons that would soon demolish his stockade and smash even the thick walls of the broch in time. The broch offered spurious safety at best, Brude knew. When he was a boy, he had thought it was the strongest fortress in the world. Now he knew differently and his expert eye recognised that it was poorly sited. The high ridge to the south east blocked the view to the sea, even from the top of the tower where the watchmen could see for miles in any other direction. The ridge was too narrow for the broch to have been placed on its summit without a huge effort to dig out a flat base, so the men who had originally built the broch generations before had taken the easier option of building it on the flat land to the west of the ridge. Experienced Roman soldiers would soon have th mocksiege weapons dragged to the top of the ridge, allowing them to shoot down onto the broch from the higher ground. Or they would take the longer option of waiting for the broch to run out of water because the nearest stream was a hundred paces away and people cooped up inside would soon be forced out.

Despite its failings, which were obvious to Brude, Colm apparently still believed the broch was a fortress. Brude wanted to tell him that if the emperor was coming he would bring more than one legion with him. The Romans, he knew, were masters at dividing and conquering their foes, which was why they often paid silver to men they thought might help them, or at least not oppose them. But if the emperor came in war, the Boresti would only have two choices; surrender or die.

He wanted to say all of this but he knew that Colm would not believe him, could not conceive the true might of
Rome
because he had never really seen it. Brude realised that his relations with Colm were already strained, although he did not fully understand why. Arguing with him now would not help and would probably change nothing anyway. “Maybe you’re right,” he conceded. “They probably won’t come this far.”

“Of course not. But one day I might lead another raid to plunder their villages and towns.”

Again Brude looked at him in astonishment. “I don’t think that would be a good idea. Don’t you remember what happened the last time?”

Colm laughed. “Of course I remember. But next time we will go by sea. I intend building ships to take us past the wall. That way we can raid and be gone before they can catch us. Even the Romans can’t put soldiers on the sea.”

“Yes they can,” countered Brude emphatically. “They have ships too, you know.”

Colm was not impressed. “I can understand your fear, Brude. You spent a long time as a slave. You are bound to be afraid of the Romans. Not all of us are.”

“Of course I’m afraid of them,” Brude retorted. “I’ve seen what they can do. Not as individuals but as a people. They are far stronger than you think. That force that defeated our tribe thirteen years ago was only one small part of one legion. The emperor has thirty legions under his command and the empire is bigger than you can possibly imagine.” Brude stopped because he was growing angry and he could see from Colm’s expression that he did not, or would not, understand. “Oh, you can do what you like,” he said disgustedly, “but don’t count me in your plans.”

“I wasn’t intending to,” replied Colm coldly. “Anyway, the last raid was not entirely a failure. Those of us who survived came back with enough booty to make us rich men.”

Brude asked the question he knew Colm was waiting for. “How did that happen? I heard that everyone ran like scalded cats.”

“Oh, we did,” Colm admitted. “But later we went back and crossed the wall further east while the Romans were hunting down the Selgovae. We found a rich farmhouse and some very wealthy merchants. When we got back across the wall we bought lots of sheep, cattle and other goods from the Votadini. I came back with enough wealth to make me the most important man in this village and I’ve been head man ever since.” He jabbed Brude’s chest with his finger. “I don’t intend that you will take that away from me.”

Brude decided he had best try to make amends for his earlier outburst. He really had not meant to fall out with Colm like this, not on his first day back home. He took a deep breath. As calmly as he could, he said, “Colm, I just want to be home. I am pleased that you have done well for yourself and I bear you no ill will. I have no intention of doing anything more than living as peaceably as I can.”

Colm gave him a satisfied nod. He still liked to win. “Very well, we shall speak no more of this. But there is one more thing,” he said, a hint of iron in his voice as he pressed home his advantage. “I hear Mairead was here yesterday.”

“Yes, she came to thank me for finding your son.”

Colm nodded but his eyes were hard. “She’s my wife, Brude. I want you to remember that.”

Brude returned his stare and nodded. “I know that, Colm. I won’t forget it.”

Fothair was in a bad way. Brude and Seoras carried him down the hill as gently as they could but he was badly hurt and the journey was agony for him. When they reached Seoras’ house Brude laid him on the bed he had asked his mother to make up, then set to tending his wounds. His mother insisted that was work best done by a woman but Brude assured her he knew what he was doing. He fetched some of his most prized belongings from his pack, a selection of delicate instruments and some small leather pouches, each one tied and with the name of its contents inked on the side. He set them out beside the bed. Kneeling, he stripped off Fothair’s dirty clothes and washed his wounds. There was a jagged gash on the tall man’s left side, at the foot of the ribcage and another, deeper stab wound on his left thigh. Brude checked them and, selecting a small pair of tweezers from his instruments, he carefully picked out the fragments of wool or cloth that had been forced into the wounds.