DEDICATION
To David A. Drake-
A Romanophile who doesn’t believe the Empire has fallen; who has been writing fantasy tales of Classical Rome these past ten years; and who furnished the historical data for this noveclass="underline"
Noli elicere quid deponi nequitur…
EPIGRAPHS
Any man may look lightly into heaven, to the highest star; but who dares require of the bowels of Earth their abysmal secrets?
Letter from Persil Mandifer: Manly Wade Wellman, Fearful Rock
Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl.
Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred: H. P. Lovecraft, The Festival
PROLOGUE
The sun that morning had shone sullen red through the mists that swirled above the ridges and moors. Now the sun that sank beneath the Highlands’ jagged rim burned a deeper red-as red as the blood that clotted across the trampled heath below. In the lengthening shadow fifteen thousand lay slain-skin-clad savage and armored legionary, Pict and Roman-their hacked and skewered bodies strewn wherever they fell.
Leaning on the shoulders of his chieftains, Othna Mak Morn, war chief of the Pictish clans, looked upon the field of carnage through dying eyes that blazed bright with triumph. An entire legion had died here today-a victory purchased life for life with Pictish blood. Rome had suffered its most crushing defeat on British soil, and Othna Mak Morn would not walk alone on the road to hell.
To protect Rome’s new province from the unsubdued tribes of the North, Emperor Hadrian had ordered the construction of a great wall across the breadth of Britain. Some eighty Roman miles it stretched, the Wall of Hadrian, across the Solway-Tyne isthmus-cutting the island in two with unconquered Caledonia to the north and the partially philoRoman tribes to the south. For years the legions had labored over ditches and earthworks, raising a wall of stone and turf some eight to ten feet thick and some fifteen feet in height, with fortlets for its garrisons at each mile along its length.
The Caledonian tribes made known their wrath over this hated monument of Roman conquest through countless raids and ambushes as the wall progressed. Their tactics were strike and retreat-a sudden storm of arrows amidst the sweating legionaries; sentries slain in the night and fires stealthily set; small bands of legionaries who marched across the moors and never returned. Their sudden, swooping raids were a constant and deadly harassment. The ponderous Roman military machine was too clumsy to overtake these savage guerilla bands who struck like adders and swiftly melted away into the heather-beyond pursuit into the Caledonian Highlands. But neither were the northern tribes powerful enough to mass a major offensive against the entrenched Roman legions, and withal the Wall of Hadrian inexorably rose to completion.
Yes, these murderous guerilla raids demanded reprisals from the might of Rome-some massive counterattack that would impress upon thick barbarian skulls the futility of their petty resistance against the empire that ruled the world. Thus came orders to Publius Calidius Falco, general in command of Legio IX Hispana, whose legion had at last completed its work on the turf wall sector: Advance north among the Caledonian tribes; lay waste to all crops and herds and villages on your march; slay all who stand before you.
And on one morning in late spring the Ninth Legion marched north of Hadrian’s Wall-six thousand legionaries and two thousand auxiliary cavalry, with slaves, women and children in the ponderous baggage train. They marched into the mist and the heather-and vanished from recorded history.
There was little resistance to the Ninth as its iron-shod march carried ever northward through the lands of the Brigantes, the Selgovae, the Novantae, the Damnonii, the Venicones, and others of the Celtic tribes. For how could half-naked barbarians dispute the advance of an entire legion? The barbarians had no towns to burn-towns were a Roman innovation in Britain. But such rude camps and settlements as they encountered, the legion put to the torch-looting herds and stored grain, destroying crops in the fields, slaying all who did not flee. On into the bleak Highlands of Caledonia, where dwelt a race of savages said to be far older than the barbaric Celts.
Calidius Falco had heard tales of the Picts, most of which he greatly discounted. They were blood enemies of the Celts, who feared them and in general left them alone in the fastness of the Highlands. Legends told that the Picts had been masters of Britain in forgotten centuries, before the Celtic invaders long ago defeated them and drove their survivors into the waste places of Caledon. The Picts were said to dwell apart in brutish savagery-a degenerate and ogrish residue of the Stone Age. There were many other dark rumors and legends that brought a sneer to Calidius Falcos lips. On occasion he had been shown corpses of squat, almost dwarfish warriors clad in fragments of crudely tanned fur and armed with heavy black bows. Such men were Picts, Calidius was told-but while he acknowledged their skin was a darker hue and their facial features almost apish, it mattered not to him whether such barbarian carrion was Pict or Celt.
What did matter to Calidius Falco were the persistent reports his spies and scouts brought to him concerning a substantial army of all the Pictish clans that was said to be massing in the Caledonian Highlands. Such reports twisted the general’s sneering lips into a ruthless smile. These barbarian fools were playing into his hands. Had they already forgotten the lesson Calgacus so bloodily learned not fifty years before in these highlands!
For many weeks the Ninth had been burning and pillaging through the heather. They had fought raids and skirmishes beyond counting-but nothing approaching a decisive engagement. Now at last their depredations were drawing the barbarians out of their lairs and mud hovels-luring them together into one great army of rabble that would be meat to dull sharp Roman swords. For it was not battle but butchery when poorly equipped and untrained barbarian armies met the disciplined legions in open battle. Had not Calgacus faced Julius Agricola with an army of thirty thousand barbarians? And had not Agricola left ten thousand barbarian dead on the slopes of Mons Graupius that day, with less than four hundred Roman dead? And in doing that he committed only auxiliary troops, with his legions standing idly by the watch!
Legio IX marched confidendy into the Caledonian Highlands to seek out, engage and annihilate this Pictish army. Calidius Falco felt no fear, for defeat was a chance so unlikely as to change his sneering smile to broad laughter. He was following in the steps of Agricola-and, after all, were not the Picts said to be even more primitive than the barbarians who had followed Calgacus? The Ninth would win a crushing victory, the Caledonian tribes would be subdued, and he, Publius Calidius Falco, would return, in triumph with the governorship of Britain a likely reward once reports reached Emperor Hadrian in Rome.
The Ninth had barely resumed its march that fatal morning when the dawn skies turned black with arrows, and Calidius Falco knew he had at last engaged the Pictish army.
At the moment the Picts attacked, the Ninth had been advancing along a mountain river whose narrow gorge pierced the Highland fastness. Well was it named Serpent Gorge, but guides swore this defile gave passage into the central Highlands where the Picts massed their army. Rain the night before left the rushing stream swollen over its banks, and footing was treacherous on still-damp boulders and slippery mud. Pressed between the walls of the ravine and the flooding stream, Legio IX was stretched out in a poorly ordered column. At the head, men with axes hacked away trees in an effort to clear a roadspace, while midway back cursing legionaries struggled to force the overloaded baggage train through the clutching tangle of tree roots, spiny gorse and rainslick boulders.