In the Shadow of the Wall (42 page)

Seasaidh suddenly fell with a scream of pain. Castatin ran back to help her. He tried to lift her up. “My ankle!” she sobbed, tears of pain and fright streaming down her cheeks. “I hurt my ankle!” She tried to put some weight on it but she could not stand. Castatin looked anxiously out at the ships. They were moving far faster than he thought possible, the banks of oars powering them through the waves with incredible speed. Seasaidh was crying, both from her ankle and from the fear of the Romans while Barabal was biting her lips nervously, watching the ships’ inexorable approach to the village. The steady beat of the drums was clearly audible now and they could easily make out the individual men standing on the flat deck. Castatin could hardly believe how many oars the ships had. The galleys were so big they made Gruoch’s half-built vessel look puny and insignificant. He looked towards the village where people were now streaming up towards the hill, heading for the sanctuary of the broch. Then he realised the warning horn was blowing from the top of the tall tower of the broch where the watchmen had, at last, seen the Roman galleys. Watchmen had stood atop the great tower for many years without ever having to sound the horn, but it was blowing now, urging the villagers to safety. Castatin and the girls were still several hundred paces from the nearest roundhouse and the boy, with a terrible feeling of despair, knew he had made the wrong choice of where to go. To get to the broch now, they either had to head towards the village and up the track, try to climb the hill at its steepest, most densely wooded slope or turn back eastwards, retracing their steps before circling round the hill to approach the broch from the other side.

He had to make a decision. Seasaidh could hardly walk so climbing the steep slope was out of the question. Going back was a long walk and she would slow them down. It would take them away from the Romans but, if chased, they would be out in the open with no chance of escape. Which left the shortest and most dangerous route. The Roman ships were perilously close now so they would have to hurry. He turned to Seasaidh, ordering her to climb onto his back. “I’ll carry you,” he told her. To Barabal he said, “You run for it. Go up the hill through the trees, if you can. It will be safer if you keep out of sight.”

Barabal, her face strained and pale with fear, shook her head. “We should stay together.”

He did not have time to argue. With Seasaidh clinging to his back, her arms wrapped around him, almost throttling him, he set off in a lurching run for the trackway. The ground was relatively flat but the grass was long, with many tussocks and dips, lumps and bumps to impede him. Without the weight of Seasaidh on his back, he would hav thought nothing of covering the short distance to the village but, slowed down by his burden, his breath was soon coming in great gasps and his legs and arms were growing incredibly tired.

The Roman ships crunched onto the gentle slope of the beach, the prows grinding on to the pebbles. Men leapt from the decks, splashing into the water and running ashore, shields and swords at the ready. As he saw them fanning out quickly in small groups, Castatin knew with a dreadful certainty that he was not going to reach the trackway before the Romans cut them off. He had almost reached Brude’s new roundhouse, the nearest home to the foot of the hill, but the trackway was still two hundred paces away and the armoured soldiers were far closer. “Into the trees,” he gasped. He swerved, almost falling as his legs betrayed him. Seasaidh squealed in fright and he heard Barabal almost sobbing as she ran for the nearby trees. Behind them he heard a shout but he kept running. He staggered to the trees, twigs scraping at his face as he ducked into the shade but he soon had to stop for the hill was steep and impossible to climb unless he let Seasaidh go. Barabal turned, her face ashen and her eyes wide with fear. There was a crash of someone charging into the trees behind them. Castatin turned to see three heavily armed Roman soldiers burst into the wood. The first one shouted, triumphantly as he ran straight at Castatin. He saw the deadly sharp blade of the man’s gladius, just like the sword Brude used to carry. He tried to step away but he was hemmed in by the trees and Seasaidh was screaming in his ear, weighing him down. He tried to dodge the sword but, instead of thrusting, the soldier suddenly rammed his large shield forwards. The metal rim hit him hard, knocking him to the ground. He twisted in a desperate effort to save falling on top of Seasaidh. He felt her release her grip on him, but in doing so he crashed into the trunk of a tree, hitting it hard with his head. Everything went black.

Cruithne saved the villagers that day. At the first sound of the warning horn, he was calling up to the watchmen to find out what was wrong. When he heard that four Roman war galleys were approaching, he did not hesitate. He wore his heavy mail coat all day, which at first had been an affectation, a device to show everyone how strong he was, but now he was glad of it. He strapped on his sword, grabbing his shield and spear as he yelled for the warriors to assemble outside the broch. He saw Seoc running to join them. Urgently, he pointed, jabbing his spear towards the man. He knew he could rely on Seoc to follow orders. “Get everyone up here inside the broch. Everyone! Have five men hold the door and you hold the stockade gates with ten more. You do not come down. If the rest of us have to retreat, you hold the gates to cover us. If the Romans get here first, get inside the broch and hold it. Understand?”

Seoc nodded. Without wasting time, he counted off fifteen warriors, sending them to their posts while Cruithne gathered the remaining men around him. “We’re going down the hill,” he told them. “I don’t know how many of them there are, so we stick together. All we need to do is hold the path long enough for everyone from the lower village to get up here.” He saw their faces, tense and excited at the same time. Some, he knew, had been involved in the fight against Gartnait’s men the previous year but, if what Brude had told him about the Romans was true, s wromised to be a different affair.

Mairead ran up to him. “Castatin is down there!” she told him. “Please! You must get him back.”

Cruithne nodded. “I’m on my way.” A year ago, he knew, Mairead would not have sought his help. A year ago he was just Colm’s enforcer, a man everybody feared. But things had changed a lot for Cruithne since then. He had been born into the tribe of the Caledonii but he had been thrown out by his father for his constant fighting. He had wandered the lands of the Pritani, seeking employment as a mercenary wherever he could find it. But in the close-knit tribal groups of the Pritani, a mercenary was an outsider, a man not to be wholly trusted. When he had heard how Colm of Broch Tava was seeking men who could fight, he had come to the village where the young chieftain had given him a position in his warrior band. Cruithne was not a clever man. He knew that. But he did have a talent for fighting. Because he was so big, people were naturally wary around him and Colm had encouraged him to use his strength to bully people into doing what Colm wanted. Cruithne, for so long an outsider, had felt wanted at last, at least by Colm. He had been happy.

Then Brude had arrived. Colm had made it clear that he did not like the man and even Cruithne could sense there was an old rivalry there over Mairead. But when Brude had beaten him so easily and then, to Cruithne’s astonishment, had treated his injuries and spoken to him like a friend, Cruithne had lain awake at nights re-evaluating his life. He watched Brude, saw how he acted among the villagers and saw how they responded to him. Cruithne compared that with how people reacted to Colm. He realised that people obeyed Colm because they were afraid of what he might do to them. But they did as Brude told them, or more usually what Brude merely suggested to them, because they respected him, because they liked him and because what he said usually made sense. It was hard for Cruithne to change who he was, but he decided that he would try to be more like Brude. Now Mairead had turned to him for help.

He would have helped anyway. His task was to protect the village and the village was under attack. This was what he was good at. For a moment he wondered whether to fetch Colm’s hunting dogs but he dismissed the idea; the hounds were trained to attack deer, not men. So he gave the command; fifteen of the warriors of Broch Tava followed him as he hurried out of the gate where Seoc stood with the men who would defend the stockade. Seoc’s home was in the lower village as well, Cruithne remembered, and he had those two pretty sisters. He could see the anxiety on the young man’s face but Seoc, he knew, was better here, where a cool head was needed, rather than down in the village where things could get nasty. Cruithne had grown to like Seoc and he knew that there was a chance that any of them going down to face the Romans might not survive. Better to let the young man have a chance of life, he thought.

Cruithne led his men down the hill, running in a crazy, dangerous charge where the slightest slip would lead to a horrible fall. Already the first villagers were passing them, making for the broch. Cruithne shouted at them to move as fast as they could. He saw Lulach and his son carrying old Caitlin, the Brude tot woman in the village. She was berating Lulach for a fool because she could manage well enough without his help. Lulach ignored her and trudged on.

By the time the warriors reached the foot of the hill, most of the villagers had passed them on their way up. Brude’s mother and old Seoras were there, moving slowly but at least on the way. Gruoch the carpenter followed, carrying his precious tools even though they slowed him down. But Cruithne had seen no sign of Castatin or Seoc’s sisters.

Their headlong charge carried them further than Cruithne intended, bringing them almost to the houses by the time he pulled them into battle line. He forced them back to form a wall of shields at the foot of the hill. He barely had time to get them organised when he saw that the Romans were prepared for them. He had been watching as he ran down the hill, seeing the armoured men scurrying all through the village, entering houses and ransacking them before setting light to the thatch. He had hoped to catch them spread out but someone down there knew what they were doing for the Romans had stopped their running around and withdrawn to form up. Now they marched out in good order through the houses to meet the Pritani.

Cruithne heard one of the warriors muttering a prayer to Belatucadros. He felt a sudden, unfamiliar pang of uncertainty. Even though he was still only twenty-three years old, he had fought many times before, but mostly in one-on-one combat. This was warfare and he had heard Brude speak of the Romans’ deadly prowess in battle. He wanted to charge at them, screaming like a devil and swinging his mighty sword but he knew he had to buy time for the villagers to climb the long road to the broch. “Hold the line,” he shouted, surprised at how calm his voice sounded. “We need to give people time to reach the broch. Hold the line.”

The Romans advanced. There were around sixty of them, in two ranks, each of which was longer than his own small, single rank. They could easily outflank his small force. He wished he knew what to do to change the inevitable. He thought of Brude, wondering what the gladiator would do. An idea born of desperation came to him. He turned to his men. “Hold your position. We just need to delay them as long as we can. There are too many for us to beat them here, so we delay them, then we go back up the hill as slowly as we can without being cut off.” He looked at Iomhar, one of the men he could trust, and said, “You are next in charge if anything happens to me.” Iomhar nodded nervously. Cruithne looked along the line of warriors and said aloud, “Now I’m going to see what these Romans are made of. Watch and learn.”

It was an act of bravado, he knew. He had once boasted that he would fight a bear to prove how strong he was but he knew this was a far greater test. He turned to face the Romans, then advanced towards them.

Castatin groaned as he came to his senses. He did not know how long he had been unconscious but it did not seem like very long. He was lying awkwardly on his ide, his neck twisted, his head up against the thick trunk of a tree. He sat up, feeling his skull thump in protest. He blinked against the pain. His vision cleared and sound rushed back into his ears, making him suddenly aware of what was going on.

Seasaidh lay a few paces from him. She was on her back, her clothes ripped and half stripped from her but she was quite still because, where her throat had been, was a mass of red blood already swarming with flies. One Roman soldier was standing, watching Castatin with an amused expression while another was lying on top of Barabal, his undergarments round his ankles, his buttocks rising and falling rhythmically. The third soldier was kneeling, pinning Barabal’s arms to the ground so that she could not resist. Castatin could see that she was sobbing, her eyes clenched tightly shut. He attempted to jump to his feet to help her but he collapsed with dizziness and pain. The Roman who was standing near him stepped towards him, his sword pointed meaningfully at the boy. He said something that Castatin did not understand but he got the message when the soldier pushed him down and stood over him.

After a while the rape was over. The Roman soldiers laughed as they hurriedly dressed themselves. One of them threw Barabal’s dress at her. He shouted at her but she did not respond, so he slapped her, then grabbed her dress, throwing it at her again, clearly meaning for her to put it on. He pulled her roughly to her feet and this time she obeyed, but her eyes were blank, staring at the body of her younger sister. Castatin saw blood on the inside of Barabal’s thighs. Sickened, he looked away. Then he, too, was yanked to his feet. He moaned at the sudden pain in his head. The Romans laughed again. Then they shoved the two captives out of the trees, towards the village.