Old Gonar rode beside him near the head of the column-the small, swift Caledonian horses holding back pace to the mass of foot soldiers. The wizard had spoken little since their predawn council. Now he squinted back at the Pictish ranks and observed, “It would be well to have Cormac na Connacht and his Gaels with us today.”
Bran grunted. “Cormac has fighting enough in the West. Alfenus Senecio has sent the Roman fleet to burn the Gaelic settlements along the Alban coast. We’ll not need him-nor will Cormac need us.”
L. Alfenus Senecio, who had succeeded Titus Sulla as governor of Britain after Bran Mak Morn’s unhallowed vengeance cut short that sadistic tyrant’s brief tenure, had completed reconstruction of Hadrian’s Wall and for months now had striven ineffectively to subdue the rebellious tribes of Caledonia. Cormac na Connacht, leader of the Gaelic reavers who had crossed from Erin to claim a foothold on the western coast of Caledonia, now suffered the wrath of Rome.
Cormac it was, whose wild Gaels had harried the Wall to lure Titus Sulla to his hellish doom at the Tower of Trajan. Again Cormac, who had led five hundred Gaelic warriors to join with Bran’s combined army of Picts, Britons, and Northmen in the massacre of eighteen hundred legionaries under Marcus Sulius. Bran felt no sense of guilt at the Roman reprisals against his ally. To Bran Mak Morn, Rome was the common foe of all the tribes of Britain, and it mattered little whether steel was Pictish or Celtic, so long as it was steel stained with Roman blood.
It was curious, brooded the Pictish king. Their ancient feuds and racial identities prevented the scattered tribes of Britain from uniting against the Roman invader. Yet to Rome they were all barbarians, and Roman maps simply referred to the wild tribes north of Hadrian’s Wall as the Maeatae, who dwelt close to the wall, and the Caledonii, who dwelt yet beyond them. Bitterly Bran reflected that his own race, the Picts, was merely an obscure and backward Celtic tribe to the Roman. Ages ago Celtic savages had conquered the Pictish civilization in a thousand unsung battles-had driven the Picts from the Mediterranean into their last refuge in the Caledonian Highlands. But to Rome they were all Caledonians. Bran wished grimly that such a unified people might indeed exist.
“I shall lead the way,” he murmured.
“Milord?”
Gonar’s expression of inquiry broke Bran’s revery. He drew a deep breath of heather-scented air and laughed. The shadows that haunted his eyes lifted; the lines of fatigue smoothed from his face.
“I was thinking aloud,” Bran told him. “When we defeated Marcus Sulius it seemed to me then that no single victory could be more important to me. Now it seems to me a victory today will mean much more.”
“How so?”
“The army that defeated Marcus Sulius was a hasty alliance of Pict, Gael, Briton, and Northman-and a king of lost Valusia summoned by your magic from the gulf of time. Our victory proved that a combined army of the people of the heather could stand before the legionaries-but our alliance lasted only for that battle. Kull returned to his age of forgotten legend; the Northmen lay together beneath a great cairn where they fell; the Britons south of Hadrians Wall have been subdued once more; the Gaels have been forced to defend their own holdings from the Roman fleet. Only for Pictdom was unity achieved-for that victory won for me undisputed kingship of our clans.
“Look behind you, Gonar! We are an army of Picts! A victory today will prove to all Britain that Pictish savages can defeat the Roman colossus-defeat Rome without Celtic allies, without ensnaring sorceries! That will be a victory, Gonar! Pictish valor and Pictish steel will win that victory-and then shall the Celtic tribes look to Pictdom for leadership! To Rome we are all Caledonians. Well then, Pictish victory will form the nucleus of a solid alliance of all the peoples of Caledon-then let the Romans cower behind their wall!”
Old Gonar followed Bran’s sweeping gesture, his tattooed face reflecting the pride his king expressed in the army that marched behind them. “Such a victory must first be won, Wolf of the Heather,” he advised in a low tone for only Bran’s hearing. “My augury was only a gory sham to fire the savage hearts of your army. No man can in truth predict the issue of today’s battle.”
Bran laughed. “We shall conquer, Gonar. Pictdom is done with skulking in the Highlands of Caledon. When was there last such an army as this!”
“Not since the army of your great-grandsire, Othna Mak Morn, some four-score years ago,” Gonar reminded him. “And his was more than thrice your number.”
“And his the greatest victory our race has won since its lost age of glory,” Bran mused. “It is fitting that Pict and Roman today shall do battle near that same ground-an omen that Pict shall again conquer.” It was not chance that had directed the course of Bran’s campaign against Rome to this day’s battle.
By the time he was old enough to swing a wooden sword, every son of the Picts knew by heart the saga of Othna Mak Morn’s massacre of the Ninth Legion at Serpent Gorge. The memories of that great victory were yet alive in Bran’s youth, and though the line of Mak Morn had fallen into obscurity with Othna’s son, Berul Crookback, Bran had rekindled the flame of his great-grandsire’s glory. Once again the line of Mak Morn had bred a leader-this time a king with an iron crown.
Just as that battle was a saga of paramount pride to the Picts, so was it a memory of fear and humiliation to the Romans. The now abandoned Wall of Antoninus had been raised in the aftermath of that crushing defeat, and though the confederation of Pictish clans had drifted apart soon after Othna’s death, no legionary ever patrolled his frontier post without the terror of the Picts gnawing at his heart.
Yet, despite his fatal rashness in underestimating the danger into which he marched, Calidius Falco had correctly chosen Serpent Gorge as one of the most accessible points of entrance into the Caledonian Highlands. By converse, it was also one of the major avenues of egress. While Rome seldom dared to send her legions into the Highlands, the threat of Caledonian raiding parties issuing forth from Serpent Gorge to pillage the South was a constant concern. To counter this menace, the Romans were presently constructing a fort to guard the southern end of the pass.
Such a fort posed a real threat to Bran’s ambitions-for once complete it would both pose a barrier to his own guerrilla raids and cut off possible Celtic support from the South as well. Thus destruction of this new fort was not only a strategic necessity, but such a victory would be more fuel for the beacon of Pictish unity.
And Bran knew he must strike quickly. Fully garrisoned and with permanent fortifications, a large Roman camp was virtually impregnable to assault by an army of savages such as Bran led. Bran’s spies reported that some two thousand men-legionaries and auxiliaries-were at work on the new fort, and, that construction progressed at a rate that smacked of sorcery to men accustomed to rude camps of hide tents and mud huts. The earthworks and temporary wall-already more elaborate than those for any marching camp-were thrown up almost before the people of the heather knew the Romans were among them. Bran’s only hope of victory was to launch a massive attack before completion of the permanent system of defenses.
Thus from the Highlands of Caledon had Bran summoned his army-banding together as many Pictish warriors as he dared await to gather. Grueling days and sleepless nights of preparation-begrudging each hour of delay. Then the forced march across the moors and ridges-gathering more warriors as they passed through heath and fen. Slipping from the Highlands by another pass, Bran had swept southward to strike the Romans from that quarter which would appear to them most secure. So swift was their coming that, while doubtless Roman spies had learned of the Pictish army, there had been no time for those at their objective to summon reinforcements from the Wall.