The War at the Edge of the World (29 page)

‘You killed some more of them, didn’t you?’

‘A couple. Hard work – I nearly slipped on the wet ground.’

‘But you’re hurt – you’re bleeding.’

Castus grunted, seating himself against the wall. The second Pictish sentry had gashed his arm with a spear. Marcellina crawled across the hut on her knees and knelt beside him. He could see her face in the shadows, her smooth cheek and the curve of her lips, her large eyes watching him as he tore the ripped sleeve of his tunic from the wound and washed away the blood.

‘I need a strip of your shawl,’ he said, ‘to use as a bandage.’

For a moment she drew back, uncertain, maybe disgusted, but then nodded quickly and ripped at the hem of the shawl. She passed him the torn strip and watched again as he wrapped it around his biceps and tied it, one end gripped in his teeth.

‘Tell me what happened to you, back there at the villa,’ Castus asked her as he flexed his bandaged arm. He saw her flinch at the memory. ‘No – maybe I don’t need to know,’ he added.

Marcellina sat with her knees drawn up and said nothing for a long time, but in the half-dark Castus saw her expression shifting, her lips opening to speak and then closing. He wished he had not asked, but still he wanted to know.

‘They came very suddenly, the Picts…’ the girl said at last. She spoke in a calm, measured voice. ‘We were in the dining room, just lying down to eat, and we heard the shouting from outside. They must have come from the back of the house and surprised the watchman… Mother told me to hide in the large closet.’

Castus saw her eyes closing, her throat tightening. She was gripping her knees in the circle of her arms. ‘I heard… but I didn’t see,’ she said. ‘Mother tried to talk with them. Tried to order them away. Then I heard… I think they killed the slaves first. I was too terrified to think about what was happening. One of them opened the closet door but didn’t see me. It seems impossible – some god protected me…’

Castus touched his brow, and saw the girl do the same.

‘Then I looked out, and saw Mother and Brita the maid dead on the floor. Their clothes were gone, they were… there was a lot of blood. Several others dead, and the roof was burning… I just stayed where I was, hiding. I couldn’t breathe because of the smoke. When I looked again the whole room was on fire, the whole villa… I wrapped myself in a blanket and ran outside…’

‘You were brave,’ he said quietly, and the sound of his voice was harsh and rough compared to hers. She was shaking her head, the pendant earrings swinging.

‘No. Just scared. So scared I didn’t know what I was doing. It was… maybe a day I was hiding in the old bath-house, or two. Then I heard those men outside, talking and laughing. I found the tool, the pickaxe thing… One of them came through the door and I just hit him as hard as I could.’

‘Hard enough to break his spine,’ Castus said. ‘Not bad. And you’d have brained me too if I hadn’t seen the body on the floor and been on my guard.’

‘But there were three of them. If you hadn’t come…’

‘Don’t think about that. Just thank the gods it happened as it did, eh?’

‘How can I thank the gods for anything? My family are dead. My home is destroyed. I have nothing left. Maybe it would have been better if I’d died.’

‘You’re still strong,’ Castus told her. ‘Think about what happens next, not what might have been.’ He felt the same sensation he remembered from their talk in the villa long before, when the girl had made him vow to protect her father. A desire to comfort her somehow, or ease her distress, but no idea how to do it. He felt clumsy, untrained in kindness. Strange, he thought, that he should find killing two men in the darkness quite easy, but talking to a frightened seventeen-year-old girl so hard. Perhaps for other people it would be quite the reverse?

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I promised your father I’d protect you.’

‘You did?’ In fact Castus could not remember if that was the promise he had made – but it was in the spirit of it, he was sure.

‘Yes. So sleep now, and in a few hours we’ll move.’

He spread his own cloak on the floor for the girl, then took the less bloody of the Pictish capes and, wrapping it around his shoulders, lay down on the other side of the hut. His wounded arm stung, but he could ignore the pain.

For a while he lay still, eyes closed, thinking back over what he had seen on his reconnaissance foray earlier: the bend in the river screened by trees, sixty paces, more or less, to the far bank with trees and then flat meadows on the other side. A mile to the walls of the fortress… His mind clouded, dulled by sleep, and he thought he was back in the Pictish hut, waiting for Cunomagla to come and join him. Warmth spread through his body at the recollection.
If I die in the next few hours
, he thought,
will that be the last sensation I remember?

A slight noise, a shuffle and a step from the darkness, and Castus opened his eyes as Marcellina eased herself down beside him. He felt her body against his, her arm wrapping his chest.

‘Let me stay here,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t feel so scared now.’

He made a sound, low in his throat, and tried to resist the urge to move and embrace her. She was unmarried, he reminded himself, and a virgin. She was stunned, and not in control of herself. The girl’s head lay against his shoulder; then she was pressing her face into the hollow of his neck, her breath on his skin.

‘Wouldn’t it be good’, she murmured, ‘if we could just stay like this? Not go back to the city… just go away somewhere safe, into the hills…’

‘We both have our duty,’ he said quietly.

In the darkness he saw her raise her head and look at him for a moment.

‘It’s a shame,’ she whispered. Then she lay down beside him again.

Four hours later, they were riding along beside the river. Willows grew close to the banks, trailing foliage into the slow water, the moon was screened by cloud and in the thick darkness Castus could barely see anything. The river was a moving grey shape to his left, the trees a spreading blackness all around. Behind him, Marcellina rode with her legs astride, like a man, clasping his waist. Both of them wore Pictish capes of dark tanned leather, and Castus had removed his boots and breeches.

The horse moved slowly, ears back, nervous in the dark with the sound of the flowing water. Castus knew this stretch of river well – the soldiers used it for swimming practice – but in the darkness it was an alien and uncanny place, almost supernatural. The willows creaked and hissed as they passed beneath them, and the sound of the river was unnervingly like voices. The spirits of the wood and the water felt close, and not comforting.

‘Here’s the place,’ Castus said, and turned the horse towards the water. In fact, he could see almost nothing, but the sound of the river had changed, and he guessed that this was the wide shallow bend where a spit of mud and sand spread from their bank and another lay on the far side. The horse splashed forward into the water, Castus nudging it repeatedly with his knees and heels. The surge of the river was loud at first, and then the water rose around the saddle girths and the knees of the riders.

‘Slip down on the other side,’ Castus whispered, ‘but keep a tight grip on the saddle horn or you’ll be pulled under.’ Then he dropped into the water, and felt the cold striking into his chest. Marcellina gasped, and the horse kicked between them as it swam. Moonlight flooded through a rip in the clouds, and the river was suddenly bright, the spray glittering. Castus glanced back, and swallowed water, but saw only the blackness of the reaching willows and Marcellina’s hand pale on the saddle horn.

Then the horse rose as it reached the ground on the far bank, and Castus hauled himself across the saddle and pulled Marcellina up behind him again. Water streamed from them as the horse climbed the last distance from the river into the darkness beneath the trees. No sound came from the meadows beyond, no shout or flare of light. Castus reined in the horse, then turned to check that the girl was secure behind him. She was soaked, and beginning to shiver in the damp night breeze.

‘You ready?’ He saw her nod, the peak of her hood dipping. He nudged the horse forward again, out through the trees and across the low water meadow towards the fortress.

A mile, he thought, more or less. Some way to his left, north-east, was the line of the paved road that led directly to the gates. The temptation to goad the horse into a gallop was almost overpowering. Already Castus could see the growing paleness in the sky, the first suggestion of dawn. He kept his head down, the hood pulled over his face, and let the horse walk slowly forward. At a stand of trees he halted again, scanning the surrounding country as it emerged slowly from the night.

‘There are men behind us, in the meadow,’ Marcellina said in a tight whisper.

‘I’ve seen them.’ They were going down to the river on foot. Not a threat.

The horse stamped and snorted, shaking its head and tugging on the reins. The bridle clinked. Ahead of him Castus could make out the mass of the Pictish force camped in the open ground on either side of the road: bodies huddled in blankets or crude leaning shelters, fires still smoking from the night watch. Impossible to judge their numbers. Beyond them, in the far distance, the wall of the fortress showed as a pale line against the retreating darkness. There was not enough cover for a slow approach, unless along the riverbank, and then they would be easily trapped if anyone discovered them.

‘Hang on tight,’ Castus said. He felt Marcellina press herself against his back, her cheek against his shoulder, arms clasping his waist and fingers gripping his belt. He leaned forward over the horse’s mane, and dug his heels into the animal’s flanks.

For a few moments there was only galloping motion, the noise of the hooves dulled by the damp ground, and Castus heard the breeze rushing around his head and driving cold through his wet clothes. He looked up as a man rose from the darkness and then fell back with a cry. Castus kept the horse’s head straight and kicked wildly. He could hear shouts from all around, and he drew his sword and swung the flat of the blade back against the animal’s hindquarters. The charge seemed unstoppable, impossibly fast, straight through the Pict­ish encampment and out into the open ground beyond. When Castus looked again he saw that the light had grown and the encampment was gone, but the fortress wall was still far distant and now there were riders coming along the raised causeway of the road to his left.

He snatched a glance behind him: more pursuers, riding up from the riverbank, legs splayed from their galloping ponies, spears raised, shouting. Marcellina’s cape had slipped from her shoulders, and her hair streamed out wet and dark. The horse leaped a muddy ditch, and the jolt as it landed almost threw Castus from the saddle. He screwed the reins around, angling sideways, towards the road. There was no point in caution or concealment now.

Up on the causeway, the horse swerved and skidded on the gravel. Staggering, it charged forward again. The gate was dead ahead now, and Castus could see the watchfires burning between the crenellations. The noise of the hooves on the paved road was thunderous, but the Pictish riders were only a few paces behind. Castus heard Marcellina scream loud in his ear, and a javelin flashed past his shoulder and clattered against the road ahead. The powerful cavalry horse could outdistance the smaller Pictish ponies, but there were other riders ahead, angling up from the river to cut him off.

Castus raised his sword, yelling furiously across the horse’s bent mane. The leading rider was coming up the causeway, raising his spear; he threw, but the missile fell short. The horse charged closer. To hang back now, Castus knew, would mean encirclement and death.

Suddenly the rider was beside him, swinging with his sword. Castus parried the blow, kicked out with his leg, and the pony reared back. Then they were through, and the road was open right up to the gates. Teeth clenched, back arched, Castus drove the horse onwards – only a few hundred paces remained.

Figures were moving up on the wall, shouts echoing out into the damp dawn air, then a harsh ratcheting noise. A loud sudden snap, and Castus glanced up just in time to see the jerk of the released catapult arms. He threw himself forward, and the yard-long iron-tipped ballista bolt cut the air just above his head.

‘Don’t shoot!’ he yelled. ‘We’re Roman! I’m a Roman soldier!’ But his voice was lost in the rush of the wind, the roaring of his blood, the noise of the hooves.

Another ratcheting click, another snap. Veering left and right, Castus saw a second bolt flicker past and spike the road behind him. He stretched himself up, hood thrown back, yelling to the men on the wall. Fifty paces from the gate – the bolts could not miss now – but he did not slow down.

He heard a scream from away behind him, and turned his head. A laugh burst from his throat: one of the pur­suing Picts was stretched on the road, his pony capering away. The artillery­men had realised their mistake at last and adjusted their aim.

Now he saw the great gates cracking apart and slowly draw­ing open, armed men rushing over the threshold. The horse gave a last surge of strength, in under the shadow of the walls. Then the stone arches were above them, and Castus heard the welcome voices of soldiers around him.

Through the echoing stone-paved tunnel beneath the gate, he slowed the horse to a walk and then to a halt. The animal was soaked in sweat, shuddering and tossing its head. Castus dismounted, and then helped Marcellina down. He turned to confront a ring of shields and levelled spears.

‘Who are you?’ demanded a face from beneath a helmet rim. Castus could not stop grinning. The ground felt loose and unstable beneath his feet.

‘Aurelius Castus,’ he gasped. ‘Centurion, Third Cohort, Sixth Legion.’

‘Is this woman a prisoner?’ Two of the soldiers were leading Marcellina aside by the arms. She stared back at Castus, breath­less and confused.

‘No… no, she’s the domina Aelia Marcellina, daughter of Aelius Marcellinus, envoy…’

The circle of men broke, and Castus saw an officer, a tribune. He did not recognise the man. A cold shivering sensation rose from his gut.