The War at the Edge of the World (17 page)

‘Loose!’

The missile volley broke the vanguard of the attackers, cropping down painted bodies under the hail of iron. But others were already leaping across their fallen comrades. Another volley, thrown flat and hard. Another ten or twenty enemy dead. Still they came on.

Castus stepped back from the wall, glanced to his left and then to his rear. Timotheus and Culchianus were still crouching: no attack from that side. The assault party were hurling all their strength against the western defences. All he could hear was the noise of his breath and his blood, the grunt of the men as they threw, the snarls and cries from the enemy on the slope below. He was shouting, but could not hear his own voice.

A javelin came in over the wall, and Castus saw one of his soldiers reeling back with blood spattering from a gashed throat. He dragged the man away and stepped up into his place, raising his shield just in time to catch a second missile ringing off the boss. As the Picts toiled up towards the wall the glare of the low sun struck them in the eyes; dazzled, reeling, they were easy targets for the legionaries. But the supply of darts and javelins was running short. Soon it would come to spears and blades.

‘Come on then!’ Castus yelled to the warriors on the slope, hammering the flat of his blade against his shield rim. ‘
Come on!
’ The vigour of battle was in his blood, a clean and powerful tonic, erasing all other thought and feeling. His vision was clear, his heart racing, and he felt a wildness that was close to joy. But he held himself back; he was in command, he needed distance.

A knot of warriors surged forward, howling, and made a rush at the wall. Two were cut down by javelins, the third leaped up and punched overarm with his spear. The point thudded off a shield, then another javelin lanced him in the kidneys and he dropped heavily, without a sound. But all along the wall others were following his lead, bolting up out of the grass and running for the wall. Castus saw a painted chest, a snarling face, and swung his shield to catch the slash of a spear and flick it aside. He paused, blade levelled, just long enough for the Pict to step in close again, then he struck. His sword grated on bone, and he punched out with his shield boss and knocked the man back from the wall. Beside him, Evagrius speared a second attacker in the face.

The first rush had been broken, but there were still more warriors piling up the slope. One of them, massive and almost naked, paused ten paces from the wall and drew himself upright. He threw out his chest and spread his arms wide, displaying the fantastic tracery of scar-pictures bold on his blue-daubed skin. Roaring, he shouted up at the soldiers – challenging them, Castus guessed, to single combat. A moment later a flung javelin caught him in the chest and stuck, quivering. Castus saw the jolt through the man’s muscles, the tightening cords of his neck; then his legs folded beneath him and the Pict fell, arms swinging, to sprawl on his back in the bloody grass. Something marvellous, Castus thought, in the mad bravery of savages. Almost a shame to kill them…

A horn blast from his left, and he swung round to see the flicker of spears along the southern boundary. Jumping back, he pulled Evagrius into his place at the wall, then cupped his hands and yelled across the enclosure to his optio. ‘Timotheus! Ten men to the south wall. Follow me!’

Running, Castus leaped across the ashen scars of the cooking fires and slammed in among Culchianus’s men. A body of Picts had angled around the slope and come up from the south, over the level ground where the previous boundary wall had been torn down. There were riders too, three or four warriors urging their shaggy ponies up and across the scree of fallen stones. Culchianus and his men had almost used up their supply of missiles already.

‘Hold back!’ Castus cried. ‘Wait till they get close!’

The warriors advanced at a low jog, keeping silent, shields raised before them. They were learning already: they had seen that single men attacking the wall would be cut down, but a mass assault might break through. Behind them the riders had reached the level ground and cantered forward, urging on the footmen. A soldier stepped quickly up onto the wall, darting his javelin down into an exposed body, and then jumped back.

Timotheus and his ten-man reserve arrived just as the Picts made their rush. A volley of javelins flung at close range cut down the first of the warriors, but then the rest were up against the wall, striking with spears and swords. Roman blades lashed back, and the din of battered shields covered the screams and stifled gasps of combat. Castus saw a soldier fall, struck through the body, and jumped to take his place as the lead horseman was cantering in close, spear raised.

For a moment he remembered Oxsa, when the armoured cavalry broke through the front cohorts and crashed against the reserve line. But this horseman was no Persian cataphract. Castus stood his ground, the wall before him, and waited until the rider made his jump. The pony reared at the wall, and Castus feinted at its head with his sword. Shying, the animal clipped the stones with its hooves and the rider was flung sideways; Castus seized his leg and pulled, driving the length of his blade straight up and into the man’s exposed flank. Hot blood seethed over his hand and down his arm, and the rider fell heavily onto the parapet as Castus dragged his blade free.

‘Get out of my fucking fort,’ he said, and booted the body back off the wall.

The pony was cantering away, the other riders falling back, and the remaining warriors were retreating with them, demor­alised by the stiffness of the defence. Castus turned and saw Evagrius waving from the western wall, and knew that the first assault was over.

‘What’s the damage?’

‘Two men dead, Draucus and Jucundus. Three incapacitated by wounds. But we must have killed fifty of them, at least.’

Castus was kneeling at the centre of the enclosure, Timotheus and the section leaders gathered around him. Culchianus had his arm in a sling and a bandage around his head; Timotheus bled from a cut scalp, but his face was shining. Castus remembered that his optio had never been in battle before.

‘Send out men to gather up all the javelins and darts they can find, and kill any wounded Picts out there too. Roll the bodies back down the hill a bit and heap them up like a wall. Then we need breakfast – just hardtack, cheese and water, but it should be enough. I doubt the men could stomach anything more.’

He got up, but then paused.

‘That was well done, all of you,’ he said quietly.

The eight slaves crouched by the eastern wall, with the mules in a frightened huddle beside them. They looked up, anxious, expectant, as their centurion approached.

‘Listen to me,’ Castus said, standing straight, thumbs in his belt. ‘I want four of you to tend to the wounded. The other four take a spear or sword from the fallen and wounded men. Use them as best you can, when the time comes. Take helmets and shields too. I’ll see to it that any of you who make it home are given your freedom.’

Arming slaves was strictly illegal, but he needed the numbers now. The slaves needed no further encouragement – anything was better than sitting defenceless and unarmed in the middle of a battle. They scrambled away at once towards the injured, and the stack of weapons laid beside the wrapped bodies of the slain. Four more men, Castus thought. Less the casualties so far, that gave him fifty-five with the strength to fight.

A harsh screech and a black flutter from overhead; Castus glanced up and saw crows rising up from the feast of carrion on the western slope.
Messengers of the gods
, he remembered,
or so the Picts believe
. A shudder ran up his spine.

Hours passed before the next assault. The horde out on the plain chanted and wailed, clattered their weapons, gathered around their shouting chieftains, then sat in the grass and waited, watching. The soldiers in the stone enclosure stared back at them, wary, fighting down nerves. The blast of horns and the cheer of the advance was almost a relief, when it came.

This time, the Picts moved forward in a mass, bunching together to the west and the south. There were fewer painted warriors among them now, Castus could see. Most were simple tribesmen in leather cloaks, but behind them were the chiefs and the nobles, on horseback or riding in carts, shepherding them forward. Far back on the north-west flank Castus saw the flash of silver ornaments, the fox-coloured hair hanging loose: Cunomagla, riding proudly in a cart with a spear in her hand. And beside her, a heavy fur cape over his shoulders, was the renegade Julius Decentius.

The Picts might not know the best way to attack a fortified position, but the renegade Roman surely did. Was he directing the assault now? Castus felt an ache in his jaw, and realised that he was grinding his molars.
Bastard
, he thought.
May the gods send a foul death upon him.

Now a great collective roar came from the enemy ranks and they began to move up the slope with shields raised and weapons ready. The Picts gripped their spears far back towards the butt, Castus noticed, with the metal ball acting as a counterweight. It gave them a greater reach when they stabbed overarm, but weakened their thrust and spoiled their aim. He swigged water from a canteen, and then passed it to the man beside him. The lead-grey sky was beginning to spit rain, and the sun was gone.

The first charge came from the west, the Picts rushing up the slope behind their shields. As soon as they were in range, the darts and javelins bit, and a great wave of them dropped at once like grass swept down by the wind. For a long interval they lay among the bodies of their own slain, the dead warriors of the first assault still piled on the hillside. A horn wailed, and the mass of prone bodies stirred into motion.

‘Light between us and evil!’ Castus muttered. The dead men too were rising, their torn painted flesh and lifeless eyes lurching up from the beaten grass. He thought of the dark gods of the Picts, the hag who restores the dead to life…

Then he saw what was happening: the new attackers lifting the dead bodies and using them as shields, two men each lugging a corpse between them, chest to the enemy. Wounds showed black in the dead flesh, mouths gaped, stiff limbs jutted. All along the wall, the soldiers were shrinking back from the ghastly vision below them.

‘Centurion!’ A hand clasped his arm – a runner from Cul­chianus at the south wall. ‘Masses of them down there, centur­ion. They’re not coming on, just hanging back below the ridge. But there must be a good few hundred.’

Castus grabbed at the back of his neck and squeezed hard. His mouth was dry, and he could not think. He glanced across the enclosure towards the east wall: two men of Timotheus’s section were down, clutching the shafts of lockbow arrows, and the others were pelting darts and arrows onto the steep slope above the river. To the north the men at the all were crouched, waiting. No attack there.

‘Evagrius, take over here,’ he said. ‘Don’t let those walking corpses put you off – they’re already dead!’ The western attack was a feint, the eastern one a sniping distraction. The full assault would come from the south. He hoped he was right.

Crossing the enclosure at a run, he felt the fatigue aching in his limbs. He wanted water, but there was no time. By the time he reached Culchianus he could already see the ridge below the rampart boiling with Picts, all of them hunched together in the grass just out of range of the darts.

‘If we had more men, I’d suggest a charge over there to drive them off,’ Culchianus said.

‘No. Let them come to us.’

He saw their strategy now, simple but effective. They were closing in from all directions at once, tightening a ring around the stone defences like a ligature. He gripped his helmet in realisation: the north, he thought. The main attack would come from the north, once the defenders had been drawn off to the three other sides.

But there was no time to react; already the Picts were rising from the ridge and dashing across the open ground towards the wall, a solid mass of them running behind their shields. They lacked the discipline to hold together as they ran, and their charge formed into a chevron as the stronger and faster men drew ahead.

‘Lock your shields where they’re thickest!’ Castus yelled as the second volley of javelins arced out from the wall. A moment later and the first of the attackers flung themselves at the wall, Culchianus and his men slamming their shields into a solid barrier bristling with spears. Castus jogged to the left, sword drawn, and caught a solitary Pict scrambling in over the wall: a lunge and a stab, and the man fell back. Behind him he could hear the percussion of blades striking shields, speared men screaming, Culchianus yelling encouragement. He looked towards the north wall. Still no attack there.

The battle seethed along the line of the wall now, the Picts jostling together as their own first wave fell back from the barrier of shields. Soldiers flung javelins over the arched backs of their comrades, and could barely miss. Blades and spearshafts flickered and rang in the gap between the fighters: clash and scrape of iron, hollow thud of shields. Men screaming. Castus kept moving, ranging from one flank to the other, slashing out with his sword whenever an attacker broke through and tried to cross the wall. He listened to the noise of the fighting, waiting for the moment when the howls of attack and the desperate grunts of combat shifted to groans and wails, the noise of defeat. Or the cheer of impending victory.

But the noise, when it came, was from the other direction: a chorus of yells, a horn blast. He turned from the waist, mail shirt crunching, to see the scattered men along the northern wall wavering, a few even falling back.

‘You! And you – with me
now
!’ He was grabbing at men, hauling them from the mesh of combat and dragging them after him. They stumbled together, still shocked by the ferocity of the fighting, confused now. ‘North wall – run!
Go!
’

Then he was running with them, urging his heavy body on across the expanse of damp scrubbed turf, screaming to the men on the other walls to join him. Already he could see that he was too late: there were Picts swarming up from the northern slopes, beating aside the men at the wall and scrambling in over the defences. As he watched, a group of them kicked down the piled stones to form a breach.