That night, in a small cot in the corner of a room he and Tarcho shared with the soldiers' sons, Audax slept well. He felt safe, encased by the walls of the house, and then by the walls of the fort, all of it watched over by soldiers like Tarcho. He thought that Thalius would have said it was a cosy piece of finitude sliced out of an infinite and troubling world.
He was woken in the dark, by a big hand gently shaking his shoulder. Unthinkingly he turned limp, imagining he was back in the mine. If you fought the dirty men they made it worse for you. But he was still in Banna, and it was Tarcho.
'Come on. Get dressed. I've something to show you.'
Outside the house the fort was a pool of shadows. The only sound was the coughing of a soldier on sentry duty somewhere on the fort walls. The sky was a deep blue-grey, a warning of the dawn, and the light reflected from dew on the cobbles.
Tarcho led Audax to a watchtower on the wall, and showed him a ladder. 'Take care,' Tarcho whispered. But Audax was used to ladders in the pitch dark, and climbed up more easily than Tarcho himself.
They arrived on the narrow platform at the top of the tower, alone. Up here the air was fresh, crisp with dew, and the customary piss-stink was dissipated by the green smell of growing grass.
Audax looked out over the countryside. The fort was on an escarpment, and looking south he could see how the land fell away to a deeply cut valley where a river gurgled. A steamy stink rose up; the fort's bath house had been built down there near the water.
And when he looked east and west, Audax at last saw the Wall itself, built into the outer shell of the fort, striding in great straight-line segments across the country. Where the gathering light in the east caught the curtain's southern face, the pale stone shone. Buildings and forts studded its length, and Audax could see hearth smoke rising, as if it was one gigantic house.
It was centuries old, Tarcho said proudly. 'My own great-great-great-something-grandfather worked on it. He was called Tullio. I know his name, you see, because it is written on stones set in the Wall itself. He came from Germany. And his sons and grandsons have served on the Wall ever since. Here is the Wall, all patched up, still serving its purpose eight, nine, ten generations later, after most of its builders' names have been forgotten. What men they must have been in those days, that their vision still shapes our age today! What heroes! And one of them was my grandfather.'
Audax found it impossible to imagine that men had ever built this thing, this Wall. He might as well have been told that men had dug out the valley to the south, or spun the clouds that caught the dawn light overhead.
'Did anybody live here before the Wall?'
'Why, I don't know. Nobody important, just a few hairy-backs. Two hundred years! Think of that.'
Lights sparked along the dark line of the wall, splashes of yellow fire flickering and dying.
Audax was alarmed. 'What's that? Is it an attack?'
'No. They are signal beacons. The watch is changing. All along the Wall soldiers are standing down, and they light their beacons to tell their mates that all is well, all is well…'
They stayed on the watchtower until the sun had risen. Then they descended into the fort and joined the day's growing bustle.
XII
A week after Thalius's own arrival at Banna, Constantine and his entourage arrived-or some of them; many had stayed behind at Eburacum.
Constantine immediately ordered a review of the fort's troops. This took place on a bright, fresh morning, and Thalius and his companions watched from the comfort of a pavilion as guests of Cornelius.
The soldiers in their centuries drew up in good order outside the fort walls. The centuries' standard-bearers held aloft the emblems of their units, and each held a labarum. A new military standard said to be of Constantine's own devising, this was a long spear covered in gold, with a transverse bar to give it the shape of the Christian cross. At the summit of the cross was a wreath of gold and precious stones, containing a finely worked chi-rho Christogram.
The troops made a respectable sight, even though Thalius could see their armour and weaponry were scuffed and much repaired-it was said that some of these bits of kit had been handed down from father to son for generations. Not only that, in the light of day the walls of the fort itself looked frankly dilapidated. The fort and its units had been here for centuries, slowly subsiding into the cold northern mud, while the boundary between the soldiers and the civilian population from which they were recruited grew ever more blurred.
One of Constantine's projects was to cement reforms of the army begun under Diocletian, reforms which reflected the military reality of the age. The old distinction between legions and auxiliary units was abandoned. Now the army was divided between a mobile field force, and static units of border troops, like the units here at Banna. There was a new military hierarchy, of dukes and counts-like the Duke of the Britains stationed at Eburacum, and a Count of the Saxon Shore who controlled coastal forts like Rutupiae. Once the governors had been commanders-in-chief of their provinces' armies, but now the dukes and counts were independent of the governors-indeed their remit generally spanned more than one province. This was another example of the emperors' continuing strategy to fragment power and so limit the challenge of any one rival.
Thalius understood the military logic, he believed. You held off the barbarians at the border, and if they did get through you allowed them to penetrate deep into a fortified country, while bringing your mobile forces to bear. Even the walled towns were a part of the system, in a sense. But it was in the nature of stasis to decay, and frontier units like this tended to lose their shape and discipline. Thalius had heard lurid rumours of corruption, of commanding officers drawing pay for long-dead soldiers. It was just as well that the Emperor had come by to give the place a sprucing-up.
And this was a big day for these soldiers, a chance to break up the lifelong tedium of frontier duty with a display before the Emperor himself. Everybody knew that Constantine was here looking for units he could detach for his looming war with Licinius, Emperor of the east. Having grown up at their fort, with families of their own and roots generations deep, many of the soldiers here probably couldn't even imagine how it would be to serve under an emperor on a long campaign in a foreign land. But they were still Roman soldiers, and beneath those hand-me-down armour plates, hearts must have been beating with anticipation.
At last the Emperor himself rode by, a burly, powerful man, accompanied by his generals and aides. They all wore expensive, brightly coloured parade armour, including elaborate helmets with carved carapaces and bejewelled masks. The soldiers stood proud before their Emperor's inspection.
Cornelius, ever the traditionalist, murmured a commentary in Thalius's ear. 'Quite a mixture of symbolism-don't you think? Here you have a Roman army with its roots, let us not forget, in the citizen-farmer communities of Latium. But see the Emperor and his cronies in their fancy parade armour. I've heard travellers to Egypt and Persia say that the more centralised the society the more you see the flaunting of such symbols of rank…'
Aurelia hissed, 'Oh, do shut up, Cornelius, you bore. It's less than an hour before our audience with the Emperor.'